


That Goodneighbor Good Shit

by NukaDarling



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:21:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8769778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NukaDarling/pseuds/NukaDarling
Summary: Heavy is the head that wears the tricorn. What's a ghoul gotta do to get some action around here?





	1. Kaboom

It wasn’t that falling for her was the first thing on his mind, not really. She was a sight for sore eyes, sure, but if he went down that quick for every pretty face with a tragic backstory and twelve machine guns falling out of her pockets, he wouldn’t have any time for mayoring at all. It's a rough world full of rough people, and one eventually gets used to a certain scrappiness. 

Nora—her name was Nora—was no pushover. She looked fresh off the boat in one of them Vault jumpsuits, almost picture-perfect except for her long, dramatic hair stuffed into a sloppy braid, but she didn’t so much as flinch when he dealt with the garbage threatening visitors at his gate. She got a warm Goodneighbor hello and didn’t run screaming, which was all he ever asked of his citizens, and he asked the watch to keep an eye on her if she looked to be staying a while. He liked to know a thing or two about people, and all he’s heard about this one was some whispers from fuckin' Diamond City, but this one came in loud and clear, alright.

Maybe Valentine would know something. A pretty dame like that wouldn’t end up in Goodneighbor without some personal shit to work out, and Nick had a way of finding freaks with baggage. He’d have to remember to ask when that bucket of bolts wandered through again. 

 

The Third Rail is the classiest watering hole around, far as he’s concerned. The hotel had gotten its grubby mitts on a Protectron pissing cold beer, which was just twee as shit, wasn’t it? But Charlie is where it's at when you needed a stiff drink and problems resolved real quiet-like. Magnolia, that sweet heartbreaker, had taken the night off, so the evening's entertainment came via a crappy radio scratching out old familiar tunes—who hadn’t heard all these songs a thousand times before? That kid in Diamond City must've only had a few tapes to start with, but they all made do. And speaking of people settling for less… 

“Well, if it isn’t the benevolent overlord himself,” Daisy rasped, sliding into the seat next to his. “What’s a ghoul like you doin' in a place like this?” 

Hancock grinned, signaling to Charlie to find her a beer. Daisy liked dark ales with a bit of tooth to them, not unlike her taste in men. “Waiting to buy a drink for a pretty girl, of course. Keep me company until she gets here?” 

“Ass. Might've even hurt my feelings there. I'm real fragile, you know.” Hancock had watched her catch a shoplifter earlier in the day. Little flecks of blood were crumbling off her cheek as she talked. He nodded in agreement. “Sure you are. Delicate as your namesake, and twice as lovely.” 

While most of his town knew better than to be outright rude to him, and he’d had good conversations with smoothskins, ghouls, and robots alike, he needed a certain constitution in a person before he’d sweet-talk them. It was awful when they took him seriously, hemming and hawing and letting a pathetic man down easy, like he ever expected someone to spontaneously develop a taste for ghoul. Guards and rando drifters aside, and Bobbi No-Nose if he felt like getting stabbed in the back, Kent and Daisy were about it, and he’d sooner eat a live radroach than try to get between that man and the Silver Shroud. He and Daisy weren’t each other's type at all, but they each understood loneliness at a fundamental level. They weren’t new to this game. 

“That's more like it,” she said, swigging from her sorta-cold beer. Her fingers trailed through the condensation on the bottle, mucking up with the dust on the glass. She wiped her hand on her dress. “You still owe me that dance, you know.” 

“And I'm gonna have to stay in your debt one night longer, darlin'. Can’t have the whole town knowin' I got two left feet, huh?” He flashed her a grin. She met it tiredly. “If you say so, John.” 

Ouch. The song on the radio faded out, replaced by his favorite mic jockey ever, that awful kid who couldn’t schmooze his way out a paper bag. After some stuttering and awkward laughing, he finally made his point—something about new settlements cropping up? Good luck to them, the poor bastards—and brought the tunes back. Daisy finished her beer and reached for her pockets. “I'm gonna call it a night. What do I owe you, Charlie?” 

“Only the price of a smile,” Hancock interjected. She snorted at that. “I’ll owe you one.” 

His fingers twitched. God, he could use a hit. He finished his whiskey and said, “She teases my wounded heart. Walk you home?” 

“Maybe there's a gentleman in you after all,” she said, accepting his offered arm. He tipped his hat and smiled wryly. 

“Well, not right now, but the night's still young, huh?” 

It took her a minute, but her face was worth it, even if it did get his hat knocked to the floor when she thumped his head. He got his smile, anyway. 

 

He soaked in his bathtub that night, alone. There's distinct differences between being alone, being lonely, and desperation, and he took great care to project just the right demeanor— some swagger, a bit of self-deprecation for honesty, a face people want to talk to. A face that doesn’t intimidate.

A ruined face on a ruined body. He stretched out in the tub, soaking up the heat from the water. Politics was a cushy gig anyway, but he was getting spoiled on the state house with its running water and an occasionally working heater. Stewing in the tub softened his skin so a needle would slide in real easy and make a Med-X high… recreational. He tended towards introspective, which was much more pleasant without tapping a vein through skin like tanned leather. 

Med-X was a hell of a thing. The injection site dribbled dark blood into the bathwater, clouding it pink in one tiny spot before the rest of the bath swallowed it up, dissipated and forgotten. 

He tried to do the right thing. Wasn’t easy, wasn’t always smart, but he’s lived long enough to realize that doing right by others could do wonders for quieting the voice, that— that anxiety, almost, when the weight of the world gets to you and you realize that you are just one bloodstain in an impossible sea. Goodneighbor was a haven, and he was damn sure going to keep the doors open wide.

He can’t undo the past, but he can learn from it, and he will pour as much of himself into it as it takes. 

Lately… lately, that wasn’t much. He slipped down beneath the water and held his breath, not needing to breathe but missing it all the same, letting the ache swallow him up 

 

The next week, Diamond City radio went quiet. Hancock looked up from his paperwork, startled by a pop and the kid's sudden absence. When had it gotten so late? It had to be… shit, ten, maybe 11? He pushed a hand to his eyes, easily knocking back the battered reading glasses that barely held to his ears anyway, and then shuffled the contracts into a folder and put them away for the night. A number of salespeople had tried to charm him into building in town, promising jobs and services for the benefit of his people, but he was skeptical. He saw their faces fix into careful, pleasant neutrality around his guards, a look that betrayed a lifetime of hating ghouls but having quotas to meet.

There was going to be language in the documentation to fuck them, and he was going to find it. Goodneighbor wasn’t for exploitation… but, admittedly, Hancock knew fuck-all about building, so he was going to take as much time and as many Mentats as it took to get it right. He didn’t mind housing overflow drifters, but he knew the value of a bit of space to call your own.

“Hey, you change the station, Boss?” Sal, previously vigorously napping on his couch, mumbled from beneath his fedora. He was Hancock's favorite guard on night shift, largely because he kept to himself, probably wouldn’t murder him in his sleep, and was damn good with dealing with shit when Hancock was checked out of it. Had the charm of a sack of radstags, maybe, but even that had its own appeal sometimes.

“Nope, sounds like shit’s getting heavy in Diamond City. Finally crushed under their own hubris, maybe. I’m going out; you let me know if there’s anything worth hearing, yeah?” He patted his breast pocket down and produced a pack of cigarettes and his flip lighter, tucking his glasses in the space it emptied. They were stale as fuck, but the nicotine hit him good and fast, fueling him on just a bit longer. He grabbed his coat from the hook by the door, fixed his ugly mug into an easy grin, and sauntered off. 

You can learn a lot from people watching, especially with some social lubricant, and where else would visitors go but the Third Rail?

 

He was three shots into Bobrov's Passable Bathtub Gin, and he hadn’t seen one of the smarmy sons-of-bitches yet. A woman was speaking on Charlie's radio, describing brave, sweet Travis and how she feared for his safety, and how she wished she could bring more music but didn’t know how the tape-broadcasting-thing worked, and she could sing, maybe, if you wanted it?

They were a perfectly awkward pair. Good for them!

Several bars into the worst rendition of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” he'd ever heard, Daisy descended, body stiff and bandana-clad head held high.

Oh, no. Hancock flinched as he started to put it together. Daisy primly took a seat beside him, and Hancock signaled Charlie. Bless that floating toaster, he recognized the need for a shot of something stronger to go with her beer.

Smoky peat scotch, the good stuff. She smelled like singed hair. It went together in a cruel way.

“Those contractor’s you've been courtin' tried to steal from KL-E-0,” she clipped. “Or she thought so, anyway.”

It wasn’t the first time that row of shops had had trouble with fires. It was inevitable that Daisy's wig would ignite one day. It had been a royal pain in the ass to get it for her. 

She knocked back her shot, and Hancock draped an arm across her back. “We got you that hair before, sister, and we can get it again. Did those crooks get far?”

“Parts of them got some pretty good altitude, yeah.”

Hancock snickered and rose to stand behind her, hands moving to squeeze her shoulders. She leaned into the touch, head dropping to allow him better access. 

Ghouls tended towards being touch-starved. He wasn't going to make her ask for it.

“Come dance with me.”

Daisy scoffed. “You hate dancing. Don’t patronize me, John Hancock, I'm not in the mood.”

“Darlin’, I don’t hate dancing. I don’t know how.”

She didn’t respond, not at first, but finally turned and smiled. “Clumsy. Come on, I’ll teach you to Charleston. It’s older than I am. Don’t embarrass me out there, huh?”

 

Dancing was good, he decided. Yeah, he sucked at it, but Daisy lit up as she taught him, and that was worth tripping over his own feet some. He was pleasantly sore in the morning, even—and wasn’t that a shame? He couldn’t remember a time that he'd been worn out so quickly by so little.

Maybe he needed action. Adventure. Another few bombs to drop just to keep him on his toes.

And then she came back. 

 

“No rooms at all?”

Hancock was finishing a cigarette at the bar of the Rexford, his pocket heavy with Fred's homebrew chems. The vault-dweller had found a new outfit in her travels, all tarnished metal and mud, but he recognized the dog and the mole rat's nest in her hair.

What was her story, anyway? Apart from being homeless for the night.

“Sorry, lady, all booked up. There’s some real nice people outside who might let you camp by their fire if you grease their palms right, or you could go make them puppy-dog eyes at the mayor. He's always lettin' people crash at the State House. Uh, you okay?”

Upon closer look, it wasn’t just Commonwealth crud caked into her hair; old, dried blood had matted it into rough shape, but some of it looked fresh. She needed a doctor more than she needed a hotel.

He wasn’t going to let someone bleed out in his town without his approval, was he? He dropped his cigarette in a tray and approached the front desk.

“Hey, ears were burning. Something I can help you with, ladies?”

The vault-dweller—oh, what was her name? Natasha?— flinched. 

Eh, he was used to it. Really. 

“Oh, Mayor Hancock! You, uh… surprised me, hi.” To her credit, she made eye contact. Most people who were inclined to be frightened directed their side of the conversation to his boots.

“There he is. Have you met Nora, Hancock?” 

Bless you, Clair, you psychic minx. “I have. Glad to see you back, stranger. What chewed you up on the way over here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

She was swaying on her feet. Her dog nosed at her hip, concern written all over his dumb, slobbery face. She leaned heavily on the desk, smearing grime, and Clair had the unusual tact to let her. “Raiders at the brewery. Got them cleared out, but they got me pretty good first.”

“I'll say.” He considered her a moment, knowing damn well that his impromptu drifter camp was packed full.

He’d figure it out. “Pretty brave community service there. Very neighborly of you, even, and I always have a door open for that. I’ll show you over.”

Her look was somewhere between relief and passing out. “I'd be happy to take you up on that, thank you. I can pay. I have… bottlecaps,” she said, like the words tasted weird in her mouth.

“Don’t worry about that right now, sister. Let's get you flat.” He offered his arm for support, not really expecting her to take it.

“…heh. Cheap date.” She snickered and took his arm, just as he realized this dame was about to make life hard for him.

And difficult, too.

Heh.

 

Sal, wonderful lump that he was, didn’t have shit to say when he marched past the office to his personal bedroom, half-comatose lady and her dog in tow. It wasn’t the first time he’d brought inebriated strangers back; the first time Sal was around to see it, he had watched Hancock like a hawk until he left the room, fully dressed, to bunk down on the couch for the night while she slept it off in privacy.

It was a terrible couch. For as frequently as he had people crashing in his office, maybe he should invest in something kinder on old backs, maybe even something crafted this century.

He digressed. 

Nora hit the bed with a _whoomph_ with a desperate murmur of “Sheets! And pillows!” and was out like a light. How had a person like this survived the Commonwealth when she was so damn trusting? She hardly knew him, but here she was, bleeding on his sheets without a mention of “Would you mind not assaulting me, please?” 

Her idealism was oddly refreshing. He wondered if she usually talked her way out of conflicts, and this was an aberration. Or maybe she was a squishy Diamond City resident who never fought for nothing; that sort didn’t really seek out raiders, though. Really, she needed a doctor, but a stimpak would do in a pinch. He soaked his sleeve with bourbon from the nightstand and swiped at her exposed shoulder, cleaning away the worst of the grime, then skillfully injected the medicine, no blood, no pain. 

Well, no new blood. The sheets were a lost cause, probably. He’d never get the dog smell out. He pulled a blanket over her and closed the door behind himself. “Alright, Sal, off your ass. This one seems on the up and up, so she's prolly going to murder us in our sleep. I’d appreciate if you didn’t let that happen.”

Sal scoffed and vacated the couch, relocating to the desk and lighting a cigarette. “Somethin’ is gonna murder all of us one day. Why not a pretty girl with a fuckton of guns? Or that pillow if she’s subtle.”

Hancock draped his coat over the back of the couch and tipped his hat over his eyes. He was just barely too long for it, but it wasn’t so bad if he kicked his boots up on the arm like some kind of philistine. “Far as I know, she’d have a hard time offin’ us that way, but brother, if I'm gonna get smothered to death, I’d prefer it’s a happy accident giving some girl the ride of her life, ya dig? You just keep me alive until then, let a ghoul dream.”


	2. Well, Goddamn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some say it ain't easy being king, but they don't know the half of it. The real fight ain't what's out there, but it's what power does to your head. Sometimes you just gotta ask yourself, why?

“Dogmeat, kill!”

In what was the second, or maybe third-weirdest time he’d woken to a wet tongue in his ear, Hancock awoke rather suddenly, definitely not shrieking, and with the kind of grace that most certainly didn’t send him tumbling to the floor.

Fahrenheit seemed unsympathetic to his plight. “I pay you to protect me from vicious murderers, you ginger harlot, not to sic them on me—arrgh, what, Dog, stop that.” 

“You’re the dumbass telling the vicious puppy to sic ‘em. Who’s a good boy?” 

Hancock scowled as he tugged his boot back from the dog, who’d promptly dropped it at being addressed as a Good Boy. “Terrible guard dog. Fuckin’ traitor. You see his human around? Mercenary type, probably bleeding out in the other room?”

Fahrenheit settled herself at his desk, kicking her boots up over a stack of business proposals. “Mm. Her dog was scratching to get out. Couldn’t tell who smelled worse, so I sent her to exile in your bathtub and stole her doggo.” The dog waddled its fluffy ass over to her for emphasis and flopped down to receive ear scritchies, because dogs know what’s up. 

“You’re heartless. Knew I hired you for a reason.” He got to his feet and dusted himself off, for all the good it would do, and recovered his hat. “She lookin’ okay? Found her halfway to dead last night. Figured a stimpak and a nap would help, but she might still need a doctor?”

She regarded him with a curious look. “Seems like most of the blood wasn’t hers. If she’s not out the tub in a bit I’ll go check on her. You want coffee?”

Maybe he was getting old, or maybe he’d just forgotten how shitty the old couch really was, but he was feeling decidedly creaky. “Yeah, coffee sounds good.”

“Great, get me some while you’re at it.” He snorted, then bowed with a flourish of his hat. 

“If she says so. You always burn it anyway.”

She shrugged. “It’s my style.”

 

When he returned from the kitchenette, three cups laced in his fingers and a carafe of something like coffee in the other, their guest was sitting primly at the couch in some borrowed clothes, flushed pink from the bath. He flashed her a winning grin and set his haul at the desk. “Well, look who made it through the night. Coffee?”

She gave him a warm smile in return. “Yes, please. You have no idea how amazing this is, thank you. It’s been… a while, I guess, since I felt human.” 

He passed her a cup and took the far end of the couch for himself, leaving a respectable distance in between them. He’d hate to see that smile vanish by accidentally brushing up on ghoul skin. “We aim to please. Fahrenheit over there is to blame for it, really; gal loves her creature comforts.”

Fahrenheit shrugged. “Wasn’t that hard to rig a water heater. Surprised more settlements don’t. Takes more than a roof to make a home.” 

Nora looked thoughtful. “You’re right. I’ll remember that.” At Hancock’s quizzical face, she shrugged. 

“I’ve had some people asking for help fixing up some things. Not like I can say no, right?”

Fahrenheit laughed harshly. “Everybody says no. If you don’t say no sometimes, everyone’s gonna dump all their work on you. What were you doing to get so shot up, anyway?”

Silence, then, “I tried to help. One thing turned into another, and someone got kidnapped. It was my fault, so I was fixing it.”

A low ache was settling into Hancock’s chest. “Did you get ‘em back?”

At last, the smile returned to Nora’s face. “Yeah, I did. Probably going to stay away from Diamond City for a while, though. Those guys are assholes.”

Some invisible tension broke as Fahrenheit sniggered. “They sure are,” Hancock said, leaving back to sip his coffee, smiling behind the rim.

 

They parted ways soon after. Hancock had to insist multiple times that she should keep her caps, and no, seriously, keep the outfit, it was no trouble. Since when did anyone out here have so much trouble taking things? He finally accepted a promise that she’d come back to return it, but only on the condition that she takes better care of herself and remember to use her stimpaks.

He walked her to the gates of the town to see her off. KLE0 was rebuilding the walls and Daisy was painting over the fresh scorch marks; so, at least that was on the mend. He leaned on Daisy’s counter as Nora left, thoughtful.

“Darlin’?”

“Hancock, I know what you’re about to ask, and I’m just gonna tell you it’s a bad idea. Won’t stop you anyway, but that’s just what I think.”

He snickered, delighted by his friend’s candor. “Actually, I was just wonderin’ what I could do to help.” It wasn’t, not really, but he hated being predictable. The ache he felt seemed to deepen as she left, as he realized he’d just go back to his cushy office to be the big man in charge of—what, exactly? 

At least this was productive.

Daisy stood and handed him the paintbrush, wiping sweat from the edge of her bandana. “Won’t say no. You take over here, my knees are killin’ me on those low parts. Thanks.”

He chuckled and did as instructed while Daisy rummaged for a carton of water and took a seat. “So, tell me about her. It’s obvious you’re smitten.”

“Daisy, she got here hurt and didn’t have nowhere to go. I wasn’t being inappropriate.”

“Didn’t say you were; said you’ve got it bad for her. Didn’t even check her out on the way outta town, and you’re inspecting every ass passing through here.” 

“I like to be informed!” He huffed at the wall, not feeling half as indignant as he should have been.

“Mm, sure. But you’re specifically not creeping on her because you don’t want to scare her off. You’ve got hope.”

The ache poked at him again. “I don’t know why I talk to you. Seems like you’ve already decided how I’m going to feel about this.” 

“She did have an exceptional backside,” KLE0 purred from the other side of the wall. “Round. Firm. Efficiently muscled.”

Hancock groaned and thunked his head against the wall. “I hate both of you. You’re both exiled forever.”

KLE0 sounded as chipper as an Assaultron could. “Oh, Mayor, you don’t exile your problems. You deal with them. It keeps me in business.” 

Daisy laughed, a sound like soft bells being run through a wood chipper, and he couldn’t stay upset for long. “John, I can see how restless you are. Just think about it. Something about her is driving you batty. It could be you want her, or that you want to be her, or who knows what else, and you owe it to yourself to figure it out.” Softer, she added, “You deserve to be happy, too.” 

The ache gnawed at him, hard. “I’m gonna finish the wall so it all matches. Go fuck off and leave me to it.” 

She didn’t say anything in response, but he heard the chair reclining back. That was fine; he needed the time to think.

 

The world was moving so fast around him, plates shifting hard and threatening to topple his empire. The Railroad had been by more frequently, asking him to consider being a sanctuary city for rescued synths—and he had nothing against them, and of course they were as welcome as anyone else who found their way to him, but he hesitated to make Goodneighbor a target. As soon as word reached the wrong ears that he was harboring fugitives, what would happen to the rest of his people? What would the town think of a sudden influx of strangers?

But they’d had one interesting proposal. A team of skilled workers could arrive to build apartments, and as long as they built enough to safely house the existing community, it wouldn’t be any trouble to add enough for a few new citizens, and maybe a few for transients on their way to greener pastures. Hancock had told the yahoo in the glasses to bring him something in writing and he’d consider it, if he’d just stop skulking around the town like he belonged there. 

Fear of the Institute was on the rise, and then that ugly fuckin’ Brotherhood blimp appeared. The Third Rail stayed full lately. He’d had to move guards to the gates of town, and he hated profiling visitors to his little haven, but they’d had one too many Gunners sneaking in to get at MacCready for his liking. 

And insult to injury? He’d just gone to bed one morning when a red-eyed and off-duty Fahrenheit burst through his door to tell him he was being robbed by one of Goodneighbor’s own. 

What the fuck was wrong with people lately?

He sent her ahead to the storehouse where Bobbi No-Nose was heading. He trusted her judgement, and he needed to think. 

He took to the bathtub for a few mentats while he puzzled it out. His town was known for being rough, sure, but not against its own. Maybe you wouldn’t raise a family here, but in its own way, you became part of a bigger family, a community that understood where its strength was. 

Maybe he was too idealistic. Maybe he was too easy on them. Maybe he wasn’t enough anymore. Here he was, soaking it up in a bubble bath when everything had gone to shit? That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. 

Fahrenheit returned to him several hours later, bemused. “No-Nose had help. An engineer with good intentions of robbing Diamond City blind, and your vault dweller who had no idea she was being swindled.”

“That’s Bobbi for you. How’d it go?” He had the coffee ready for her this time, and she accepted it gratefully. It was fuckin’ early by anyone’s standards.

“Valutie talked her down and she stormed off. I don’t think she’ll be back, nobody else wanted to fight. Told her to come see you.” With a wicked grin, she added, “Figured you’d want to put her over your knee and tell her what a bad girl she’d been.” 

Hancock didn’t think he could blush, but liked to think he’d hide it if he could. “You are the worst and I’m firing you until… whatever’s two days from now. Go get some rest.” 

Fahrenheit sniggered and headed towards his bedroom. “Nope, you’re not allowed to fire me, but I will take you up on a nap. You’re welcome for saving your shit, by the way.”

He waved her off, watching Sal watch her go. When the other man realized he’d been caught staring, he raised a single eyebrow towards Hancock, questioning. “Your funeral,” Hancock shrugged. “You get some sleep, too, I’ve got it here. Got some work to do.” He retrieved his shotgun from under his desk for maintenance, realizing how goddamn long it had been since he’d taken care of it. 

Sal shrugged and left him alone with his thoughts. 

 

Nora was back the next day, scuffed and bruised, projecting all kinds of fear and guilt at him but puttin’ on a tough face all the same. “Mayor Hancock, I really had no idea we were going for you.”

Hancock leaned on a wall, smoking a cigarette with a careful indifference. “I bet. She told you Diamond City, yeah? Thought you’d do some good by robbing the stupid?”

Nora remained silent, fidgeting. Hancock tried not to think too hard on how he was enjoying the power imbalance. 

“Gotta say, I might’ve done the same thing. I was young and dumb once, didn’t give a damn who I was plowing over to get my way. I’ve reconsidered that. You were angry at them, and you saw an opportunity, right? And look where you are now.”

He held the silence for a moment, then took some pity on her. “I’m not mad, but maybe you could help me with something. Your friend did something awful to me and you’re stuck with the fallout, and I have a friend who could use some help. I’d call us square if you do one thing for me.”

Nora looked up at him, skeptical—and rightfully so. She wouldn’t be in this mess if she didn’t trust so easily. “What do you want?”

Hancock considered it. It was a hell of a request, but… “Your hair. Daisy’s wig got fucked up in a fire and she’s too proud to ask me for another one. I’d like to save her the trouble.”

He was expecting--- well, he didn’t know exactly, but relief wasn’t it. “Oh! Just that? I thought—never mind. Yes, of course, take it. There’s too much of it, anyway.” She unpinned her braid and let it tumble down her back. “You know how to make wigs, Mayor?”

“Hancock is fine, no need to be formal with me. And… no? Don’t you just kinda... I didn’t think this through, did I?”

Nora giggled behind her hand. “I’ve worked on them before. It takes forever on your own, though; I can show you how to ventilate it if you want to work together?”

“Venti—what? You’re making that up.” How does someone learn a skill like that, anyway? 

“Promise I’m not.” And the thing was, he believed her. “It’s slow and tedious and awful. I have some hooks for it at my … my old house.” 

He didn’t miss the sudden serious shift in her tone. “Well, alright. Let me go with you.” At her surprised look, he added, “Every time I meet you, you’re knee-deep in some kinda shit. I just wanna know how you keep steppin’ in it.”

“I… okay. I’d enjoy having you come along. Are you okay to leave the town for a while?”

Hancock took a long drag, then snuffed his cigarette on the floor and knocked on his bedroom door. “You’re in charge, don’t burn the town down without me,” he called through, then collected his gun from the desk. 

“Yeah, we’re good. Let’s go.”


	3. Heavy, Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That Vault Dweller is good with a gun and awful at keeping herself alive in the Wasteland. It's about time for them to have a talk.

Okay, so radroaches are the worst and this is fact, but ain’t nobody in this hellhole can honestly say they haven’t been hungry enough to think about it. Maybe those Diamond City assholes had enough crops and brahmin to keep the mayor and his cronies fat and happy, but he’d been there, he’d lived in it, and he’d nearly died in it.

If someone grills you up a radroach in a wasteland, you fuckin’ eat it, is all he’s sayin’.

“You… eat, those?” Vaultie looked kinda green around the gills as Hancock peeled the meat from the shell. Her Pip-Boy was tik-tik-tiking as she got near, and wasn’t that just fuckin’ adorable? He wondered if it was the roach or himself setting it off. “I don’t get why you’re bein’ like this. The radiation cooks out.”

“That’s not how radiation works! And everything is radioactive, so that’s not even-- it’s a _roach_ and that’s not weird to you?”

Hancock skewered the dearly departed bug a bit harder than necessary and shoved it over the fire. “You were about to eat packaged deviled eggs from about two centuries ago and a contaminated thing of water. Would you die from shittin’ yourself to death, or from being mauled by a wild animal while you did it?” 

Nora didn’t have an answer to that either way, and remained quiet as she made her way to the other side of the fire, holding a battered old army helmet on a string. “To be fair, I was going to boil the water,” she grumbled, hanging the helmet from the spit. “I wasn’t thinking about the eggs, sorry. I am an asshole.”

“Yep.” Hancock finally met her gaze, tension ebbing away with her admission. “I think we’ll get along just fine anyway.” One thing to be said for her, for all her complete lack of survival skills, she was willing to admit it. Tight-lipped with her secrets, maybe, but good company, and not bad at all with a rifle. 

They were bunking down for their second night on the road in a diner that had most definitely seen better days. They’d been given a warm Commonwealth hello by the radroaches, just after throwing down their kit, but it was otherwise safe—as far as anything out here was safe, anyway. 

“Okay, so let’s pretend that I’ve never eaten a giant bug.” Giant? It didn’t seem particularly big for a radroach. It wasn’t even much bigger than a housecat! He raised an eyebrow at her, then motioned for her to continue. “What? They’re not like this where I’m from. Could you show me how to prepare one?”

“You’ve had some hungry nights out here, haven’t you?” He wasn’t unsympathetic to that. “Bring me another one and I’ll show you.” 

 

And so, that night Nora the Vault Dweller learned to eat a radroach. Dog as her witness, she’d never go hungry again. 

 

The thing about padded diner seats is that they’re deceptive. Sure, they’re comfortable enough for your bony ass when you’re sitting upright, but try to stretch out over one to sleep and your elbow is jammed up on the edge of the table, and your legs don’t fit over the edge right, and you’re pretty sure something has pissed on the vinyl right by your face. 

He kinda missed his couch. It was a good couch.

“Hey, Hancock?”

“Yeah?” 

“This fuckin’ sucks.” 

Hancock snickered and glanced across the aisle. Even in the dim light, he could see her fidgeting in her own booth. “You’re not wrong, sister. You saw where I’ve been sittin’ real cozy-like. Guess it must have been pretty good for you, too, huh?” 

Silence, then, “Could say that. I had a different set of problems there.” 

Hancock sat up and leaned on the table, intrigued. “Yeah? Gonna tease me with that? ‘Cause I think you’ve got secrets.”

A soft chuckle in the dark, then, “Yeah? What am I hiding?”

Not much in that Vault suit, he thought. “Hmm. Well, you’ve had some contradictions. You act like you ain’t from here, but you know your way around pretty damn well, and your accent couldn’t be more Boston if you tried—I saw you try to drink from a ‘bubbler’ earlier, you can’t deny that. So… you’re from here, but you’ve been away is my guess, and you’re back for a reason. You’ve passed through Goodneighbor a few times, which tells me something has you runnin’ circles. And you let a strange ghoul tag along with you, which means you know you need help but you’re too damn proud to ask. Am I close?”

He heard her shifting at her table. Must’ve hit a nerve. “You remind me of this detective I met.”

“You mean Valentine? He’s a character. Man outta another time, that one.”

She laughed, softly at first, but devolving into an ugly bark before long. Hancock frowned and scooted out from his bench to sit across from her. She’d pulled herself into a corner, knees to her chest, trying to muffle a sound that wasn’t much of a laugh anymore. 

“Sister, your business is your own, and you obviously got a lot on your mind. Need a little somethin’ to get your head straight?” He busied himself with rolling a cigarette to give her some time to collect herself, and was working on a second when she sniffed hard and glanced up. He flipped his lighter and took a deep drag of the first cigarette to get a good cherry going, then offered it across the table. She stared for a long moment, then dragged her sleeve across her eyes and accepted it.

“I get a feeling this isn’t tobacco.” She hit it all the same, holding in the smoke for a long moment before coughing it out. “Damn—what is this?” 

Hancock flashed her a grin and saluted with his own. “Tobacco gives ya cancer, didn’t you hear? I couldn’t possibly pollute my body with that. I’m a sensitive man.”

“You’re a lunatic.” She smiled and rummaged in her pack for a moment, then laid a photo on the table between them. Hancock leaned in, careful not to touch it with his grubby hands. It was a beautifully staged photo in a—somewhere green and vibrant, like in the old books that had outlasted the war. She was dressed in a quaint old sundress, hair brushed out and magnificent around her shoulders, all of her attention on a swaddled baby in her lap, with a man—husband, he guessed, from their rings—smiling down at them. 

Hancock couldn’t quite describe what he was feeling, but he knew he’d look at that all day if he could. They looked so damned hopeful—there was no way this story ended well.

“Okay, so it’s a long story, and there’s no way in hell you’ll believe me, but we took this photo in 2077, about a month before the bombs fell. It was so hectic—it happened so fast. They rushed us into the Vault and told us we were just going to stay until it was safe.” She stopped to take another long drag, and Hancock fought the urge to press her for more. 

Finally, she exhaled. “They trapped us in these things, these ice chambers. Nate took the baby with him into one before we realized what was happening, and then it was cold like you can’t even imagine. Couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and after a while, everything just… stopped.” She laughed harshly and leaned on her palm, carding fingers through her matted hair while her other hand fidgeted with the cigarette. 

“I woke up once when some bastards came into the Vault. They opened Nate’s door and took Shaun from him. He tried to stop them and they shot him, and all I could do was watch. Nick helped me figure out that they were from the Institute—so I’m going back to find my son.” 

“That is some seriously heavy shit, Sister. I believe you.” He pushed the photo back towards her and watched her reverently pack it away, then added, “There’s no way you’re takin’ on the Institute alone. You ain’t used to the Wasteland, and they got eyes everywhere. If you’ll have an old ghoul for a friend, I wanna help you.” 

Nora snuffed her cigarette on the table and gave him a tired smile. “And I thought you just wanted my hair.”

“That is damning, inaccurate, and poorly reflective of my values; I also want you for the ‘raining justice on the assholes’ part.” He flashed her a winning smile and took a suck of his cigarette, which she countered with a sly look of her own.

“Is that it? I figured you were just into this hot MILF body.” 

Hancock choked on his smoke for the first time in ages, which hurt like hell, but was kinda worth it for the genuine giggle he got out of her. He had so many more questions, and so many practicalities to discuss, but he’d drop it for now and let her have this moment. A story like that had to be a heavy weight on someone’s shoulders, and he was pleased to see her looking lighter, if only a little.


	4. Woulda Bit You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even downtime at Sanctuary isn't simple when you're dealing with a Vault Dweller like this one.

Sanctuary Hills wasn’t even a little like he’d expected, even after Nora had told him about her brief stint as a living popsicle. Some part of him was kinda imagining green yards and shiny cars and real houses, even though nothing looked like that anymore. So, it wasn’t brilliant in that way and he was an idiot for imagining it so, but it had everything a settler could want--

\--especially a medic and a makeshift clinic capable of pulling birdshot out of a Vaultie’s backside. 

“GodDAMN you and your house and everything you stand for,” Nora hissed through gritted teeth. The topical anesthetic could only do so much to numb her, and despite being several shots of whiskey deep, it obviously hurt like hell when the medic fished out the shrapnel. It all seemed to be fairly shallow, at least.

Hancock sat near the head of the table and let her squeeze his hand through the pain, trying to appear sympathetic. “You stepped on your own trap, darlin’. You should be damning what YOU stand on.” 

She squeezed particularly pointedly, and Hancock flinched when he heard crunching. “Don’t condescend at me.”

“You have an assful of lead, and that’s not a little funny to you?” He took his hand back to shake sensation back into it, then fished in his coat for an inhaler. “Want some Ultrajet? It’ll take the edge off real quick.”

“She’s got enough problems without _chems_ , buddy,” the medic grumbled. “She don’t need to get hooked on brahmin shit while she’s recovering.” 

Hancock shrugged. “More for me, then.” Nora stared while he took a hit, horrified. “You’re huffing—that’s what Jet is? You let me smoke that!”

“Couple inaccuracies there. This isn’t normal Jet, and it ain’t smoking. More like… a gentle wind.”

“Of cow shit.”

“Felt good, though, didn’t it? Ghouls, we don’t feel the normal stuff like you do, so we get take ours a little kinkier, ya dig?”

“Oh, good, you had me sniffing vanilla shit. That makes it much better.” Nora wrinkled her nose, and Hancock smiled. She was so damn _adorable_ like this. The chems were hitting him fast and hard, like a spring-loaded shot of metal into a buttcheek, and he took a moment to appreciate a few things. The sound of life after days in a wasteland. Soft hands in his. Relief that the awful crack they’d heard, and then Nora’s scream, wasn’t a gunshot after all.

That she’d asked him to stay with her through this. 

“Should be the last of it.” The last bit of metal fell into the surgical tray as the medic surveyed her work. “If it makes you feel better, yours isn’t the only ass I’ve bandaged here lately. Wild dogs got Sturges last week.”

She was trying not to laugh, and failing hard. “It doesn’t. Much. Kinda.”

Hancock let her go with a final squeeze to her hand and leaned back far in his chair. “Anything else she needs to know, doc?”

“Stay off if it for a few days. Remember where you lay your fuckin’ traps. Med-X if you need it, but go easy on the chems. We need you alive, General.” As she scrubbed up, Hancock glanced at her and mouthed, ‘General?,’ to which Nora just shook her head, gesturing in some way that he assumed meant she’d tell him later. He turned away as she hefted herself off the table, politely averting his eyes as if he hadn’t spent the better part of an hour staring at her exposed butt, and she couched when she was decent again. 

“I think I need to lay down for a while. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Codsworth, he’ll show you around.” The adrenaline was wearing off and the liquor kicking in, coupled with the days of rough travel, and she looked fuckin’ beat. He offered her an arm for support and she shook her head. 

“Nah. Need to look tough for them.” She yawned, and Hancock laughed. 

“Yeah? Sure was an impressive snake that jumped up and bit you.”

“Wasn’t it? Haven’t seen a snake ever jump like that.” She gestured, and he followed, hitting his inhaler once more before stashing it away.

“Well, it was invisible. You know, from the radiation. You couldn’t have helped it.” 

She laughed at that, clearer and stronger than any chem fumes. 

 

“Oh, mum, I saw everything! What an awful way to welcome you home! You’d best believe I will _most certainly_ have a word with the housing authority about these dreadful road hazards.” 

Hancock took a seat on a battered sofa and watched a Mr. Handy unit fuss over Nora. In their first three minutes inside, he was compelled to offer her tea, coffee, and hot cocoa—all of which he’d had to rescind because the cupboards were completely bare—and there was a pathetic little waver to his voice when he finally offered, “Perhaps a nice cup of hot water?”

“I would love some hot water, Codsworth, that’s just what I need.” Nora sat beside him, winced, and stood again. “Hancock, move over, I’m gonna need all this, I think.”

Hancock tipped his hat and slid over to the armchair while Nora settled herself on her front. Her dog stretched out beside her on the floor like a loyal, smelly sentry. “Want a hand gettin’ to bed?”

She stiffened. Dogmeat glanced up at her, sensing the tension as she said, “I… haven’t repaired that room yet. I’m not ready to... You know.” 

Hancock nodded. “I feel ya. You’ve been doing these repairs yourself, ‘General’?” 

She blushed. “Not entirely. The settlers help. I ran into the Minutemen when I woke up and helped them out of a bind, and they immediately named me their leader. It was so weird. Their actual leader does all the work scouting out settlements that need help, so he points and I shoot. I get places basically fixed up up enough for them to start helping themselves.”

“Like some kinda vigilante puttin’ roofs over heads. I like the sound of that. Don’t that distract you from findin’ your boy, though?”

“Oh, poor Shaun, such a dear boy! I do hope you find him soon, he is absolutely _awful_ at taking his naps without you or Master Nate to put him down.” She accepted the mug of hot water and sipped at it slowly, to Codsworth’s obvious delight. He’d seen the medic use water from the tap, so… purified, maybe? 

“I’m chasing all kinds of leads to get there with lots of help from lots of people. I’m not going to refuse to help someone else.” She yawned, and Codsworth tutted and floated off to bring her a blanket.

Hancock hid a smile behind his own mug of water, imagining the family that they must have been. The room was so vivid, even hundreds of years later. “Some kind of lawyer you were, fixing up houses and ventroloquating wigs.” 

“Ventilating, and it’s a long story that I’ll tell you later. Get out and make some friends or something—hey, Codsworth, make sure everyone knows he’s friendly.” She pulled the blanket tighter, and Hancock took that as his sign to fuck off for a while. 

 

The settlers didn’t like him, but they didn’t immediately pull their weapons on him, so that was a good sign. A fella with an amazing hat and a face like a cat’s ass met them near the house. 

Hancock liked him already. He was so fuckin’ serious; what would it take to make him crack?

“Welcome to Sanctuary, friend. I’m Preston Garvey with the Commonwealth Minutemen. How’s the General doing?” 

“Oh, dandy. Doc said she’s gonna be fine. Name’s Hancock.” He extended a hand, and to his credit, Garvey didn’t hesitate to shake it. 

“Mayor Hancock of Goodneighbor?” 

“The one and only.” He flashed a winning grin, chuffed that his notoriety had gotten this far, and Garvey stone face didn’t budge a bit. “Hope you’ve heard good things.” 

“Your town has quite the reputation, sir.” Well, couldn’t deny that. 

“Oh! Mum didn’t say you were a politician! Dreadful business, that. I hope your elections don’t involve those awful yard signs—they really do tarnish the view.” Codsworth tutted at the mailbox, straightening the rusted metal dutifully at the hinges and visibly deflating when the unit creaked back to its bent position. 

Garvey wasn’t half as amused as Hancock was. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your business here? We’re not looking for trouble. These people just want a safe place to raise their families.”

Oh, is that what this was about? Did he honestly think he was trying to fuck up other communities? “I’m just passin’ through. Your general needed some supplies before the two of us head off.” 

Shots fired, and finally an emotion across that poker face. “Ah. You’re traveling together.”

‘Yeah, and without you,’ said his brain. “Mmhmm,” said his mouth. “She’s gotta cross the Glowing Sea. Helps to have a friend who’s not too bothered by the shitstorm there. We’re just figurin’ out how to get her through safely.”

He bristled. “She’s… lucky to have your help. Thank you. Please excuse me, I’m needed elsewhere.”

Was it hard to march like that with that stick up his butt? He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket—a perfectly normal, prerolled cancer stick this time—and lit up when a voice from behind scared the shit out of him. 

“You got one of those to spare?” croaked the oldest woman the Commonwealth had ever seen. Or maybe Nora was the oldest? Or, shit, minus the ghouls, he knew for sure Daisy had been around since the invention of dirt. 

Anyway. An old woman wants a smoke, you give an old woman a smoke. 

“Sure do.” He tapped another one out of the pack and flipped his lighter for her. She inhaled like a champ, then exhaled with a sigh. 

“It’s been too long. The kids here think a few chems here and there are gonna kill me, but you and I know better than that. Even too much doesn’t have to kill ya. It can make you stronger for it. There are sacrifices you made that you won’t ever get back, but you’re a smart one, Mister McDonough, and you always find a way to make it work. Just you take care not to get wrapped up in your own head and let it paralyze you. She’s gonna need you.” 

Silence. For the first time in his entire goddamn life, Hancock had no idea what to say. 

“Call me Mama Murphy. Got any Jet on you?”

Well, there was an easy question. He was still shaken as he passed the mostly-full inhaler that Nora had used before. “Yeah, sure. Anyone asks, you didn’t get it from me, I’m supposed to be makin’ friends.”

“All your secrets are safe with me, kid. You just let Mama know if you need anything.”

Hancock fled—no, made a _tactical retreat_ before the conversation could get any weirder. 

 

He found a bench outside a repaired house to watch the sunset. The insulation wasn’t enough to muffle the sounds of an argument inside, but nobody else seemed to mind it much, so he followed their lead. People were putting down their tools and mingling around a rough little bar that had been thrown up on the sturdy foundation of what used to be a house, along with a few other stands where vendors peddled their junk. It wasn’t a bad start to a town at all; traders were in with their pack brahmin at all hours. 

Inside, the woman had stopped shouting. They’d been at it for a long time, it seemed like. He was just about to start asking what they did for dinner around this place when he saw Nora carefully step out of her house, Codsworth and Dogmeat tailing behind her. 

She did seem to enjoy having her family around her, he thought, and his heart ached for her losses. 

“How do you go and do a thing like that and nobody gives you grief?” he asked her, offering her the rest of his warm, awful beer from the warm, awful bar. “An injury like that would get you laughed out of a lot of places.”

Nora finished the beer, scowling. “I think only a few of us know, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. How can you drink this? It’s so skunky.” 

“The hell is ‘skunky’?”

“Uh.” She picked at the label as she thought on it. “Imagine a cat, but terrible. That’s a skunk. Now imagine beer, but then you have this, and that’s skunky.” 

Isn’t it funny how you can feel your pulses when your heart beats fast? He didn’t have to touch them to know his blood was tryin’ to leap out of his skin. 

“So, have a good rest? I met people. Weird fuckin’ town, but I like it.”

Nora beamed, obviously proud of her work. “It’s not what I remember from before, but it’s home. And yeah, I needed that. Invisible snakes take a lot out of you, I guess. I found those tools, by the way. If I can find a wig cap and maybe some lace I can get started on your friend’s wig. It’s going to take a few weeks, but I’m not going anywhere fast for a while.”

“We need to figure how to get you across the Glowing Sea, anyway. I’ll look for that stuff for you—that really is a hell of a skill. How do you know how to build towns and hair and shit? You said you shouted at people for a living.”

She glanced out at the milling townspeople, then gestured at the house. He followed her in to see that the crudely wired system powered a few lamps inside, giving the place a cozy feel with some relief from the heat. She pulled a panel from a high cabinet to reveal a hidden compartment and retrieved a bottle from it—and from the label, it was some very old and very good liquor. She poured them both a shot and leaned on the island counter. 

His belly burned in such a beautiful way. He took a seat and leaned close, savoring the moment. “Mm, good shit right there. Surprised no one lifted that from you.”

“Nate and I did all kinds of childproofing. You wouldn’t believe how we hid the bedroom stuff. Bet there’s still handcuffs under the floor.”

He was glad he’d finished his drink, or he’d have choked on it. “You… are not a shy lady. Thought you old-timers were all fainting couches and sensibilities and shit.” 

She laughed and poured the next round. “Is that what people think? I’ve heard the strangest theories. Especially about _baseball_.” She shook her head, “No, I guess people seemed really uptight, at least on television? But I worked for Nuka-World for years, and you need a thick skin to get through there.”

“Nuka-World? Ain’t that the weird-ass theme park full of raiders?” He sipped at his glass this time, aware that it might be the last time he’d ever taste whiskey this good. 

“Is it? That’s a shame. It was pretty fucked up by the time I left, but it was still mine. I started in legal, but they started moving people around. The more skills you had, the more hours you got, and we were trying to put a down payment on this house, so… I lied.”

“A lawyer? Lying? I am shocked and appalled.” Hancock nudged her with an elbow, which she smacked back playfully. His arm tingled pleasantly where she hit him.

“Ass. I was—borrowing credibility, more like. I studied technical theatre in college, so I had the basics of putting up a show. I could sew, I could hang lights, build sets—that kind of thing. I usually had a couple days warning before they moved me around, so I just studied up on what I said I could do and I usually faked it fine. It got to a point where all of the Kiddie Kingdom’s show crew was me and, like, three other people.” 

“Which explains how you started putting up settlements. Damn, you’ve got some work ethic.”

She shrugged and toyed with her glass. “I do what needs to get done and worry about it later, that’s all. Want another?”

Yes, desperately, but she was looking on the edge of peaky. “Why don’t we save that for another night and you show me around some? I don’t think I made a good impression with your friend Preston, and I think he’s the one roasting some kind of huge animal for everyone.”

“Food that isn’t roaches! I love food that isn’t roaches. Yeah, I’ll get us in on that, c’mon.” She grabbed him by the elbow and led him out, and Hancock let himself be dragged along, not for the first and not for the last time with Nora, just enjoying the ride.


	5. Zatoichi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora never had this kind of salon talk with the gals back in her time, and Hancock may not be the best barber in the Commonwealth, but baby, he will get the job done.

They stared at each other over their breakfasts of hot water and gin with a splash of Nuka. They’d endured quick tepid showers and dressed in pajamas and dressing gowns while they washed the blood out of their travel gear, and the whole thing was so, so surreally domestic. 

He couldn’t remember ever being so comfortable with someone, but then they had to make it weird. He’d have been willing to put the whole thing behind him, but Nora had been compelled to keep her word about it.

He finished his drink and set it on the counter. “You real sure about this? We could swing by Diamond City and get a professional to do this for you.” 

“I’m not sure about anything, but I trust you not to maim me with scissors more than anyone in that place.”

Her hair was clean and damp and shiny, but just somewhat too matted to brush through. She’d very carefully taken a seat while Hancock moved behind her. He felt her shiver through the first stroke of the brush. 

Must be hard to get over ghoul skin touching you. She’d left her Pip-Boy off so they could work without her Geiger counter telling them both what a bad idea this was.

“What did you look like before?” 

“Hmm?” The brush snagged in a knot, and he set the brush aside to try to work it free. Out of its braid, her hair was much longer than he’d thought. “A lot prettier on the outside than in, I gotta tell ya. Yellow hair, kinda shaggy. Real popular with the kinds of girls who didn’t mind consorting with someone like me.” He ran the brush through the mostly relaxed knot and felt it smooth out. “One down. I think I see a mole rat nest in here.”

“You’re so hard on yourself. Do you… still feel that way?” She leaned into his touch, flinching just a bit against the pain, and Hancock absolutely did not know how to process that right now.

“Not so much. Getting ghoulified really reshuffles your priorities. I knew I was a piece of shit and I wanted the outside to match the in. Seems kinda bizarre now, but I don’t regret it none.” 

She turned to meet his gaze, some unreadable emotion on her face. “You did this to yourself? I didn’t realize you could choose.”

“I didn’t choose, exactly. Experimental chems. It would kill me or fuck me up so bad I’d wish it had in the end, but I had a hell of a time getting there. I didn’t care where I ended up. I don’t mind it so much anymore. Took some… adjusting, if we’re gonna be delicate about it, but I figured out who my real friends were real damn fast.” He flashed her a smile with more confidence than he felt, but she wasn’t buying it. 

“Alright, we’re going to talk about this more later, but I’m glad you’re here, and that I get to be one of the real friends. I can’t imagine a fake friend who’d be so patient with me. I keep fucking this up. I tried to rob you, and that’s not even the worst thing I’ve done out here.” She leaned her cheek against his chest and sighed against his borrowed pajamas, and how was she so _warm_?

He set the brush aside to run a tentative hand through her hair. “You’ve got a damn fine excuse, sister. You’ve got a steeper learning curve than the rest of us. Once we find your boy, you can settle back here and raise him up so that he doesn’t have to see how awful things are. You said he was in the upper side of Diamond City before, and that means he hasn’t had it too bad. He’s got a chance at a good life with you, and I’m gonna help you get there, alright?”

She sniffed into the lapel of the ridiculous bathrobe. “If I can stop stepping on my own traps and delaying us.”

“We needed a rest. _I_ needed a rest. I got lazy up in Goodneighbor and now I’m winded by three days of travel. Let’s just take our time, you heal up your ass, and you can show me how to help with this hair for Daisy while we figure out how to go swimming through uranium.” He gave her a squeeze, then backed off before he made it weirder. 

He really didn’t want to scare her off. He could own up to the shameless flirting, but he took special care to perv freely on all sorts of people so nobody felt singled out. Touch, even as innocent as this, risked getting too real and queering the relationship. 

“It’s for Daisy? I didn’t think to ask who it was for. I like her.” She settled back on the bar stool and swiped at her hair a few more times before admitting defeat and passing the brush back to Hancock. “She had me return some books to the library for her.”

“Sounds just like her. She’s a big ol’ romantic for the old days. Bet she loved shooting the shit with you about it, huh?” He fished some—twigs? Is that what that was?—from the nucleus of one mat, tangled it worse, and resigned himself to cutting that bit free with the only-kinda-rusty shears they’d found for this.

Luckily, she didn’t seem terribly upset about it. She had enough hair that she could share with Daisy and have a practical style of her own, even with a few corrective snips.

“It was nice. I met the Vault-Tec rep who put us into the vault, too—no hard feelings there, either. And Kent is adorable, right? I get the nostalgia.” A pause, then, “Daisy’s lucky to have you. I’ve heard your people say that you two are really good together.”

“What now? Me an’ _Daisy_?” He barked a laugh so loud he had to lean on the counter while he got the giggles out. “You thought—oh, hold on—that’s really good. Someone was pullin’ your leg. She and I are friends.” He bit his lip, such as it was, against another laugh. “Oh, shit, Nora, I—I guess I can see why it would look that way, huh? But she’s into a very particular kind of guy; I’m not young, dumb, or smooth enough for her, if you feel me—but she’d be on your friend Preston like fleas on a raider. Oh, that gives me an idea—“

“No, power of veto, we leave Preston out of it. I don’t know what you’ve said to him, but he’s been acting weird since we got here and I’m blaming you.” He chuckled, and she added slyly, “And what kind of lady turns your gears, hmm?”

“Oh, I’m an equal-opportunities piece of machinery, Sugar Bombs. There’s enough here for everyone, not just the ladies.” Were people weird about that back then? He couldn’t remember, but if that was an issue with her, may as well get it out of the way now.

“Really now, Dandy Boy Apples? So—does that mean you’re seeing Kent?”

“Now you’re just fucking with me, Pork n’ Beans. Do you really think there’s nobody out here desperate enough to touch a ghoul? Wasteland’s full of ghoulfuckers. We’re still people.” He tugged at the brush with a bit more force than necessary, and she turned to scowl at him. 

“That is not what I was saying, my Perfectly Preserved Pie, and you know it. I just thought—you’re so nice to some people, but you’re also really suggestive. I’m just trying to figure you out.” She paused, then added, “Do I need to come up with another food name for you? Because I’m running out of ideas.” 

Hancock snickered, despite his lingering tension. “Good, ‘cause I’m running out of nests to untangle, and I’d just be stalling before the big chop. Oh, there’s one, you can be deathclaw chops this time.”

“I’ll pass. You can cut the ends off if you’re stalling, maybe like six inches? It’s all rough there anyway.” 

Hancock bit his tongue. Some dragons were best left unpoked. “Sure, I can do that.” 

As he cut, she drummed her fingers on the counter anxiously—and who wouldn’t with blades like these so close to their squishy innards? “So, it’s not Daisy and not Kent. Someone I know?” 

“I’m not with anyone. Mayoring is hard—well, no, it’s incredibly easy but still very isolating work. I don’t usually meet a lot of people that I could build that kind of trust with. Like they say, you don’t shit where you sleep, and you don’t go wooing your constituents. They need to feel safe in my town, not like some creep is charging them a sex tax.” He snipped at a long chunk of split hair and tried to line up the next cut even with it. “Some places do. It’s one reason I wanted to come with you, actually. Not to sound like an asshole, but I had this feeling you didn’t know how it worked here, and—I guess I wanted to see you safe.” 

“That would be sweet if it wasn’t so patronizing. But-- I get it, thanks.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I did run into a place like that. I had to shoot someone to get out. Several someones. I’d killed a person for the first time that week getting the Minutemen out of a bind, and it was still really fresh, but some kind of instinct took over.” He could hear a sadness in her voice, tinged with rage. “The Minutemen are rebuilding, and we’re recruiting. When we have the manpower we’re going to take that settlement back for the people.”

“—by the people. Words to live by.” Fondness welled up in his throat, threatening to spill out into his voice, and he’d better put a damper on that real damn quick. “Your hair’s as good as it’s gonna get. You ready for this?” 

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Don’t cut my head off if you can avoid it.”

Hancock pulled a sword from its sheath like some kind of goddamn samurai, sharpened earlier that morning just for this, and twisted her hair into a thick bundle around his wrist, and he absolutely did not miss her little gasp as he pulled it tight. 

He’d be shitting bricks to have a blade so close to his throat; she just seemed elated when the length was gone. “Holy shit, I did not expect that to be so scary.” She was flushed pink and breathing fast, and—

“---and I should go do something with this. Yeah.” He turned away to unwind several feet of sleek hair from his wrist and tie a cord around it. “Hey, if you’re alright, I need to go check on something. I’ll just… leave this here.” He bounded out the side door without waiting for an answer and searched his robe with fumbling fingers, and _of course_ he hadn’t moved his fucking smokes over...

“You look like you seen a ghost, kid. I’ve been savin’ this for a special occasion, and I think this is it.” Mama Murphy had her chair situated in the empty carport by the door, and she was offering him something in a needle and bless her, _bless her_. 

“Lady, I don’t know how you got your hands on Calmex, but sign me the fuck up.” He rolled his sleeve up and slid the needle into his arm, not minding the pain—focusing on it, even, to ground him until the tranquilizer kicked in. “Shiiit. I just learned something about myself.” 

Mama laughed like a drowning yao guai and took a puff from her Jet inhaler. On the street, Marcy Long passed by them with a sour look on her face—or that’s just how her face always looked, Hancock couldn’t tell. “And that’s just the beginning. You’ve got a long way to go.” 

“You scare me, you know? And I think I’m into that.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Getting there. Whew.” 

How the hell do they move on from _that_?


	6. Uranium? I Barely Knew 'im!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Really, there had to be more efficient ways of finding a hazmat suit than this.

After three days cooling their heels at Sanctuary, Nora decided she was finished healing and that it was time to hit the road. Hancock had made sure to schmooze well while he was there and spread some of that Goodneighbor good cheer. It may not have impressed Preston Garvey, but even he could recognize the value in a little politicking. If the Minutemen were really going to try to be a thing again, then they needed allies, and his little town could benefit from a group of skilled—and _sober_ — workers committed to really improving lives. 

They had a few philosophical differences, maybe, but who didn’t? If he could negotiate with those Railroad freaks, then he could certainly manage it with the Minutemen, especially if he could stay on good terms with their general. 

Things weren’t bad there, but it had most definitely gotten weird. They were cordial, but it was hard to have a real conversation out here with so many people expecting so much out of her. Nora had adapted to her new look by wrapping up in a faded red bandana that, coupled with some giant sunglasses she’d nicked from somewhere and, gave her an illusion of pin-up glamour—well, shit, no wonder everybody needed a word with her lately.

They’d only had a week together in close quarters, but Hancock could see right through that shit real fast. Nora was a woman who laughed freely in a fucked up world, matched Hancock drink for drink, and genuinely seemed to care for the poor bastards around her. The look was cute, for sure, but it was an injustice to reduce her down to that. He was relieved when she finally pulled the plug on it.

“I have the hair pretty much treated,” she told him as they were packing up. It had been sorted and combed and boiled and all kinds of shit he couldn’t keep track of, until there were dozens of bundles of her own hair. 

Hancock hadn’t interfered with the process. He didn’t understand it anyway, and it was already surreal to see parts of her turned into some kind of product, but she swore that it wasn’t a huge hassle. “I made hair for this magician at Nuka-World. Everyone else in the stage shows made do with synthetic wigs, but Oswald was ridiculous. He made enough money for the park that we were _strongly encouraged_ to give His Highness what he wanted, so his wardrobe budget was crazy.” Then she’d laughed and told him how the tedious work helped her think, as long as she knew he had her back while she zoned out.

If he glowed at that, it was only because she was developing a sense of self-preservation, that’s all. One less thing to worry about. 

Right. 

He was all sweetness and sunshine to the residents as a few of them saw them off. Codsworth was exceedingly pleasant and formal with his farewells, reassuring Nora that he would do his best to hold down the fort, though he moved with a nervous energy at sending her off yet again.  
Garvey was also pleasant enough about it, even extending a hand to Hancock after he’d finished a private chit-chat with Nora. “Look after the General. If we’re ever going to make the Commonwealth safe, I… the Minutemen need her.”

To his credit, Hancock accepted graciously, and not with needling comments about all the good they’d be doing together while he was left there to play babysitter to the settlements. There was a time and a place for being a petty motherfucker, and this was neither. “Dogmeat does all the real work lookin’ out for us, but I’ll do what I can.”

And then they were back at it. It didn’t seem too dangerous on this side of Boston, if you weren’t stepping on your own traps, and it really was a wonder that raiders weren’t more of a presence this far north. Maybe their Minutemen had an influence around here? But he couldn’t imagine any gang being intimidated by a gentle place like Sanctuary.

“Has he made a move on you yet?” He said to Nora’s back. He had been covering her six in travel, which suited him perfectly fine. Bit odd to see her hair dangling free around her neck, but he did feel some relief—amongst other things— that nobody was going to grab her by the braid in combat. Left him free to worry—no, _wonder_ about other things.

“Who what now?” Nora glanced back at him, frowning. “Need a little more information here.” 

“Garvey. Think he named you his leader ‘cause he has a thing for bein’ ordered around by capable women.” He didn’t miss the little purr in the guy’s voice when he reported in. O General, my General, a settlement needs our help, indeed.

“And it’s completely impossible that I’m there because I’m good at it?” 

“You didn’t mention the Minutemen once before we got there. I have no doubt you’d be good at it if you were actually in charge—and no, I’m not sayin’ your work isn’t good, the Commonwealth gets safer everywhere you go. But you aren’t issuing orders here. _Generally,_ that’s what a general does.” 

She slowed, still looking ahead. “Hey, Hancock. Look in my bag and get us some waters, would you?”

Her backpack had an alarming amount of stuff in it. Did he travel that heavy when he was on the road before? He had vague memories of feeling thirsty; made sense to carry so many cartons, he supposed. She accepted one when he passed it forward, but didn’t open it.

Huh. 

“Preston Garvey is not going to ‘make a move’ on me, Hancock, and I don’t appreciate that you think a man can’t work for a woman without making it some kind of fetish. Preston handles settlements because he has the connections, he has the time, and he has the skills. I am not secretly beneath him in either sense of the word, and I will leave your ass back in Goodneighbor if that’s a problem for you.”  
Hancock fell back a bit to give her space. Had he really sounded like that? He hadn’t meant to, but looking back… “Guess I was the asshole that time.”

“Yep.”

He cracked his water and took a long drink. Stale, compared to Sanctuary’s water filtration system pouring straight from the taps. “Okay, yeah, that was uncalled for and I’m sorry. But he still wants you.” 

She glanced back, a faint smile on her lips. “I can accept that.” 

“Good to feel wanted?” He picked up his pace to walk beside her, bumping their elbows. 

“Mm, thinking of those hands all over me.”

“Bet they’re real soft.” 

“Oiling that gun all day—“

“—but never firing.”

Nora snickered, and the tension between them melted away. “Guess my home defenses are strong enough that he never gets to use it, huh?”

“Strong, maybe too strong when you’re triggering your own traps.”

“Oooh, Mayor, talk ballistics at me.”

Hancock fell behind just a bit to compose himself. Affix a wry grin, toe the line but never cross it, don’t get hopeful—the ingredients of a guy someone can talk to. “Another time. We should figure out where this place is, exactly.”

They’d discussed a few options for getting across the Glowing Sea, and as she didn’t care much for power armor, the next-best option was to find some lead-lined hazmat suits. She thought she knew of a laboratory somewhere in town, and some quick booping at her Pip-Boy had confirmed that it still existed. It was likely to have been scavenged for supplies long ago, but the alternative was trying Diamond City—and it sounded like she wasn’t on the best terms there. Something about a jailbreak? She seemed hesitant to talk about that one, so he didn’t push it too hard.

Nora seemed to be a bit of a well-meaning hellraiser; no wonder they got on like a house on fire.

 

Cambridge Polymer Labs was imposing, whispering at what it used to be from the cutesy Halloween decorations at the receptionist’s desk, to the oh-so-friendly robot who ushered them in and offered them a job on the spot. Hancock had a bad feeling about it, but Nora charged in like a damn fool. 

She was cute in her lab coat, anyway. All that bluffing she’d done before the war certainly made her sound like she knew the first goddamn thing about chemical engineering. His response was a little more—authentic, anyway, but it got him a welcome spiel about running security on interlopers. 

Despite Nora’s needling, he elected to pass on the outfit. His coat was secure enough. Even the dog got a little security vest, which even he had to admit was adorable.

In the biggest plot twist that nobody could _ever_ see coming, the sweet little Miss Nanny trapped them in the lab to figure out a scientific mystery that had baffled some of the greatest minds of their time. The pile of gnawed bodies in the decontamination room suggested that they weren’t the first scavengers to fall into this particular trap. 

He sighed, lit a cigarette, and let the ever-optimistic vaultie try to dig them out of this mess. 

 

“This is pretty fucked up. Thought it was all peaceful and shit before the bombs?” Hancock was poking through a terminal while Nora tried different canisters in the polymer coating machine. She seemed convinced that she had the answer in her collection of samples, and Hancock wasn’t about to harsh her mellow, even if logic said that if it was so damn easy, why hadn’t the scientists figured it out before? 

 

“War didn’t start with the bombs.” She frowned at the machine as another combination of samples failed. At least they’d found the damned hazmat suit; he hadn’t liked her getting so close to the uranium core needed for the machine, but her Pip-Boy wasn’t screaming about it, so he wasn’t about to swoop in and white knight at her. “Things had been tense for years. There was all of this propaganda that everything was fine, that all we needed was a distraction, but it was all there under the surface, you know? I barely saw Nate for the few years were married. He was a soldier.” 

Hancock leaned back in the chair to watch her, not missing the shift in her voice. “Want to talk about him? You haven’t, much.”

She was turned away, but he could hear the smile in her words. “You know, I think I do. I want to remember him like he was before… all this. He was always thinking. It took me a while to get used to it, actually; he’d find somewhere to sit and just zone out. I thought it was some kind of PTSD at first, but then he’d get up and write a speech or design something to build or--- or tell Shaun a really elaborate story that he’d been making up. He was on leave when the world went to shit. If he hadn’t, he… he might have lived, I don’t know, but he was holding Shaun when we got frozen. The Institute sent someone to take Shaun, and he was fighting with everything he had, and they shot him.”

Hancock moved up to the machine, offering his presence but not imposing it on her. She turned towards him and buried her face in his shoulder, shivering even under the heavy suit.

“Hey, sister, let it out. I got you.” He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a squeeze. “How long you been carrying this around with you?”

She took a long moment to answer. “I’ve lost track of time. I think—a few months? I found the guy who shot him and I blew his goddamn brains out. That doesn’t get my family back, but I can keep it from happening to anyone else. The Institute did this, and they’re going to answer for it.” She pulled away to remove the hood from her suit to wipe at her eyes. “I’m glad you’re here. You didn’t sign up for this, but you’ve been--- it’s nice that there’s still a few good people left.” 

She dropped the hood on the console, then cringed when she heard whirring. “Shit, what did I press—“

And then like fucking magic, the machine craps out a chunk of power armor and they’re free to go. 

They took a moment to stare at it. “That’s it. That’s what was worth trapping all these people.”

Nora sighed. “Almost makes me glad I wasn’t around to see what it was like in the beginning. I’m… really tired, I think.” 

Hancock ruffled her hair, grinning as she leaned into the touch. “You just spent all day learning some high-tech shit, and all I did was stand around and look pretty. I’ll go out and kill us some food if you wanna set up camp in here somewhere.”

“Mm, roaches.” 

“You complaining?”

She yawned as she pushed away from him. “Nope.”

 

Hancock did manage to take down a radstag and get a decent chunk of it, and Nora had a cozy fire going in front of the building by the time he’d returned. She dozed by it while he watched the roast—or so he thought.

“What makes a ghoul go feral?”

Hancock poked at the fire. “Ain’t sure. Known some ghouls who’ve been this way for a long time, like Daisy, and some who turn within a couple years. I’ve heard of a few going feral when they’re real emotional. A few didn’t make it far out of Diamond City when McDonough kicked ‘em all out, whole families just trying to survive, like anyone else—and you’d better believe he spun that as ‘saving the city’.”

“You got kicked out?”

Hancock frowned. “No, I was smooth then. I just watched it happen. We’d grown up with them as our neighbors, and my brother just boots them to the curb like garbage on his inauguration day.”

Nora sat up at that, staring. “Wait—back up. McDonough—you’re _brothers_.”

“Surprised?” Hancock chuckled harshly. “Shouldn’t be, we were both shitty people. He fucks over the people who don’t look like him, and I don’t do a damn thing about it but run away. I get to Goodneighbor, and it’s the same damn thing with Vic. Some idiot waves his dick around, feeling like a big man ‘cause he’s got all the people terrified. He puts down a drifter one night right in front of me, him and his thugs, just slams his head on the ground and spills his brains everywhere, and I don’t say anything. I just sit there.”

“What could you have done, though? You could have been killed, too.” 

Hancock sighed deep. “Yeah, but I would have done something. I didn’t even think about it. Got so fucking high after that ‘cause I couldn’t stand myself. Woke up in the state house and saw these clothes, then I got this idea. What if I wasn’t John McDonough, biggest fuck-up to ever crawl out of Diamond City, but somebody who stood up to the assholes like Hancock did?” 

Nora scooched closer. “And did you?”

He smiled and dropped his hat on her head. “Sure did. Put together a militia and got that garbage out of Goodneighbor. Hung a rope around Vic’s neck and threw him off the state house balcony. All these people were looking up at me, and I felt like somebody, you know? I’d done the right thing for the first time in my life.” 

“Is that why you’re helping me take the Institute?” She was adjusting the hat so she could see him, and he felt something tighten in his chest. 

“Mm, that’s part of it. Other part’s kinda selfish. I think you’re interesting, and I’ve been getting’ kinda soft sitting up on my high horse.”

She glanced at him, a long look dragging up from his ankles to his eyes. “Soft, huh?”

He flicked his hat so it dropped over her eyes again, grinning. “Makin’ a man feel objectified over here, darlin’.”

“You aren’t used to it? I saw how those lab ghouls were looking at you.”

“They were looking at you. Fresher meat. Speaking of, this is about done.” She wrinkled her nose, and he took his hat back with a grin. “Oh, and, uh… that bit about us being brothers. Just keep it under your hat, will ya? The more separation there, the better.”

“I wouldn’t want to be associated with him, either. You’re much better company. At least you’re only scaly on the outside.”

He knew he liked her for a reason. “Alright, we could keep insulting my brother all night, but we’ve still got a long trip before we get to the Glowing Sea. It only gets worse from here.”

“Great.” She yawned, then took his knife to stab at a chunk of meat to give to her dog before hacking off a piece for herself. “Thanks, Hancock. For everything. I don’t deserve a friend like you.” 

If he was overly warm—well, he was really close to the fire, wasn’t he. “Don’t mention it.” 

What a day. What a weird fucking day.


	7. Hali-lujah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glowing Sea ain't no place for a sane man. Are you gonna sink or swim?

Things had been going so well leading up to it, so of course it all went to shit at the Glowing Sea, which was the worst and Hancock regretted it already. He’d agreed to wear one of the bulky hazmat suits with Nora, scoffing at her concern as they approached the barren hellhole, but he hadn’t expected it to be so loud, and even with a functional air filter, he felt like he was choking on the stinging, putrid air from the radstorms.

Nora was looking kinda green in her suit, too. He knew she was keeping an eye on her Geiger, but he still worried. He was carrying most of their Rad-X, just in case something happened to her and she couldn’t access it, but she’d already gone through a third of it and the only lead they had was some rumor about the Cult of Atom—and he was in no mood to deal with those rad-addicts right now. 

He was perhaps still sore with them from their last recruitment drive when it bled into Goodneighbor. It took _weeks_ of bullshit to appease both sides of it, even though they were entirely in the wrong for trying to lead his people out into the wilds. It was hard to go against people like that who couldn’t be threatened, though, because if you stoop down to their level, you’re both crazy. Couldn’t even shoot one without the rest breaking into a hymn about Great Division or whatever the fuck.

He ached for a strong hit of Ultrajet. He was as sober as he’d been in weeks, unable to even get to his Mentats through the suit, and he started to wonder where it had gone so wrong. His nerves felt raw, stretched perilously thin, and more than that, a sharp edge of shame. Nora was coping better than him, the irradiated junkie himself, and all he was doing was carrying their shit while she dealt with the local friendly fauna.

Well, some of their shit. Dogmeat was far away from here guarding the rest of the stuff they didn’t want soaking in the filth. He’d resisted the urge to roll around in radioactive sludge in his nice coat until now, so he didn’t see a great need to ruin it now. 

When they finally found the cave—or were found by the cave’s defenses, he didn’t even mind it. The radiation was tolerable enough that he and Nora could get shot at with their masks off, at least, but the turrets never rang out.

He should have been more interested. Nora was invigorated by her success thus far, so eager to talk to the scientist who’d escaped the Institute, so close to her shot at getting her life back, but he just felt. 

Off, kind of. 

Really off. 

“You coming, Hancock?” He felt her words more than he heard them. He leaned heavily against the wall and unzipped the suit enough to fumble for a carton of water. 

“Your guy is Institute. I’m sure you’ll make a better first impression without my handsome mug lookin’ over him.” He avoided her gaze. “I’ll be listening. You call out and I’m there.”

“If you’re sure,” she said, obviously not liking it at all, but accepting. “I’ll try to be quick.” 

And then she was gone, leaving him to slump against the wall to fight the worst nausea of his life.

 

And then he woke up. He couldn’t remember the particulars of having fallen out in the first place, but his mouth was dry, his head was throbbing, he had to piss like a motherfucker, and he was staring up a big green dude who, from experience as a human, was probably wondering what ghoul face tasted like.

“What kind of a ghoul gets radiation sickness?” said a surprisingly kind voice for, y’know, an irradiated killing machine. 

“One who’s made some pretty dumb choices. What kind of super mutant wears an adorable scarf like that?”

“One who has also made some pretty egregious mistakes. Brian Virgil.” He extended a hand all civilized-like, and Hancock noticed an IV in his own when he shook with him. Oh, his suit was gone. Shirt, too.

“Hancock. Got a lot of questions here, buddy.” 

Virgil nodded and rolled the IV stand within reach. “The latrine is outside. RadAway is a potent diuretic, and you’ve been on the drip for a while. I’m guessing everything else can wait?”

Bless him. He sat up and, using the IV stand for support, dragged himself back out to the mouth of the cave to solve at least one of his issues. When he returned, Virgil ushered him back to the bed to check his injection site, frowning. “It’s very interesting. The ambient radiation is healing this wound faster than your body can take the medication. Your symptoms are typical of human radiation poisoning. It’s almost like your body has not acclimated to itself. How long have you been like this?”

Hancock accepted a carton of fresh water. It tasted like bile in his throat. “About ten years. Where’s Nora?”

“…You must understand, you weren’t getting better.”

He sat up. “Virgil.” He moved to rip the needle out of his hand, and the other man flinched and grabbed him. Hancock wasn’t a particularly strong man before any of this, and add a decade of muscle erosion since he’d turned, and he was in no shape to fight a super mutant in a battle of strength. “What the hell is going on?” 

“She is getting help. You weren’t responding well to treatment. It’s a good start that you are awake now, but you are unlikely to survive another prolonged exposure across the Sea.”

Hancock fell back against the bed. His head felt like he’d been kicked twice by a Brahmin. “For help? She left me here.” Well, what else do you do with useless baggage weighing you down.

Stupid, stupid. 

Virgil, satisfied that Hancock was leaving the needle alone, turned back to his—was that a lab? Crude, sure, but cluttered with all kinda of shit Hancock had no chance in hell of understanding. Guess you can take the mad scientist out of the mad science factory, but, y’know the rest. Anyway. “She headed towards the Crater. Some… people, of sorts, live there and have adapted to this environment. They may know something.”

“What, no—you let her go to the Children of Atom?”

“As much as you let her cross the Glowing Sea. It’s almost like she has the ability to go where she wants without our permission,” he deadpanned, and Hancock wanted to be offended, but he was right, of course, and he didn’t have the energy to bicker about it. If she wanted to go soak in some rads with the crazies at the eye of the storm, what could they do? What could _he_ do? 

Virgil turned back to him with two hot mugs of something and took a seat by the bed. Not coffee, from the smell, but damn if it wasn’t close enough. “So, tell me about going ghoul. It could help me figure out how to get us back.”

“Back? Alright, first, whoa, nobody unghouls, and I haven’t ever heard of you guys going back, either.”

Virgil leaned in. “Which is why it needs work. If your friend can infiltrate the Institute, she can find my research on it. She won’t leave you here while she finds it, so I am _strongly motivated_ to get you well enough to get out of my home.”

“Was that a joke, big guy?” Hancock stretched out, fighting the fatigue settling deep in his bones. “Alright, Mister Experiments, it was a science project that got me this way. I’ll tell you all about it if you promise me one thing.”

“I’m not promising anything, but I’ll hear you out.” 

“Mm. If she’s not back soon, get her back here safe. I’m not worth dying over. If she does get back here and I can’t talk to her myself, convince her to go on without me.” 

“…I can do that.” They shared a look then, an unspoken understanding that Hancock was unlikely to walk out of there anytime soon, if ever. “So, tell me about your project.”

 

Nora returned at some point, though he had no idea how much time had passed. Hancock watched it happened, but he’d worn himself out talking. Virgil, while gruff, had been very kind, keeping him hydrated while the RadAway wrecked his body, holding the pisspot later when walking got too difficult, and even holding him through the worst of the muscle tremors under the guise of examination. He was an interesting man, to say the least, and Hancock was almost glad to have known one more crazy motherfucker to do this to himself before he— before their business was finished there, one way or another. 

He honestly did not expect to see her again. Even in the hazmat suit, looking tired, looking frail, she was radiant. And then she stripped the yellow suit to touch him with bare hands, and hell, there were worse ways to go than this. 

And then a figure appeared behind her, jaundiced, its face a mask of rot and twisted features. He closed his eyes against the sight, leaving just the relentless tick of Nora’s Geiger counter and blackish stars dancing on his eyelids, and as he felt its cold claws rip into his neck, he wondered—quite suddenly, and why hadn’t he realized it before?—if this was what it meant to go feral. 

At least Nora would know what to do when he did. 

He wouldn’t want to live like this.


	8. Overboard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the Glowing Sea to an irradiated pond, and really, why are there radscorpions in Massachusetts, anyway?

Being a ghoul with radiation poisoning is one of those things you’ll want to joke about when it’s all over. Go to the bar, drink free on everyone’s sympathy for the rest of the night, emphasize how much of a badass you were while glossing over the ugly bits. Nobody wants to hear about how you vomited blood on the Vault Dweller’s shoes and saw demons in the shadows. Goodneighbor is a brutal place, and its leader needs to keep up.

Hancock was starting to feel hope that he’d see it again.

The yellow menace who’d inspired a very temporary retreat from his sanity turned out to be an old woman from the crazy farm near the Crater, one with a fucked up face and a big ol’ needle of something in his carotid. Apparently, Nora had been pretty damn sick herself when she found them, but just being near this Isolde lady seemed to reverse the damage. Or the old broad was so magnetized that her aura fucked up Nora’s Geiger counter, whichever, but she felt better all the same, so it might have had some merit. It had apparently taken some impressive bullshit about how her dear friend was not yet destined for Division, and wouldn’t the wisest of Atom’s Children have any ideas at all?

Hancock wasn’t sure what she’d negotiated, exactly, but the old woman had been convinced to help them when she learned that they were trying to get Virgil out of the Children’s patchy hair. He wouldn’t have been thrilled to receive a syringe of mystery juice to the neck if he’d been lucid to see it, that was for damn sure. She’d stuck around just long enough to see him wake up—and for him to reconcile the sight of that rad-freak now versus what he remembered in the haze from before.

He’d had bad trips before, but man, did this one suck. At least the ache in his bones was fading, and the fog in his head was starting to clear. 

He wasn’t feral. He was the worst at being a ghoul, and he felt like a dumpster fire right now, but he had his mind intact, and all he had to do now was just keep it through one more trip across the Sea. At least it would be easier to get out of it than it was finding one particular recluse in one particular fucking cave. 

They triple-checked the suits, split the Rad-X between them, gave Virgil their farewells, and off they went. 

 

Radscorpions. Who the fuck came up with that one is what he wanted to know. “They weren’t even native to this area before the war,” he bitched. “Right?”

“Massachusetts wasn’t known for its scorpions, no,” Nora agreed from somewhere behind him. “Honestly, all of the wildlife seems really improbable. The way we understood genetic mutation back then isn’t holding up.” There was a splash, a yelp, then, “Goddamn, that’s cold! Hnng, where was I?”

The suits had done their jobs well enough, and both of them made it back across without more than some nausea and some hair falling out, at least for Nora. The price for protection from the fallout was that those suits were humid and awful in the summer heat, and neither was particularly interested in getting dressed in cleanish clothes while smelling like four days of unwashed body. They were near enough to Lake Cochituate after picking up their stuff that they stopped for a quick bath. 

Before, Hancock might have been way more squeamish about this, but his sense of propriety wasn’t a big issue after what they’d been through together. He had an old patio chair facing away from the lake, guarding while she skinny-dipped, and he just didn’t have the energy for this right now. 

If she ended up seeing more of him than either of them wanted on his turn, then too damn bad. “You were explaining how the Commonwealth isn’t doing the apocalypse right,” he prompted, scratching absently at Dogmeat. 

“It’s not like that! It’s—okay, before, when we had issues with reactors? Like, really bad meltdown kind of problems? The military would kind of quietly evacuate people and cover it up. Towns just fell off of maps. Without people, nature would take over. Animals don’t—didn’t—really live long enough to experience mutations from radiation. And why would everything get _brown_?” She made a noise of disgust and splashed hard in the water—scrubbing at her hair, maybe? “Without human interference, you’d think it would be overrun with plants, even if they were radioactive.”

“They teach you that in law school?” Hancock yelped as cold water hit the back of his head. He just barely reigned in the impulse to turn towards her; instead, he stood to remove his hat and coat just in case this got ugly. 

“Jerk off. No, _Mayor_ , some of that was just common knowledge. Not the cover-ups thing, I got that from Nate, but nuclear fission was the foundation of our society. Even children learned the basics of it in school.”

“Well, there’s our problem, Sister! Ain’t enough schools to go around to teach the kids how to properly survive the Wasteland—or it’s that they’re too busy scavenging a living for their families to brush up on thermodynamics.” He felt an edge of irritation with her, but he couldn’t place why, exactly. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t had a chance to go to school—that had been his brother’s course, but he’d never had the desire—and it wasn’t exactly that he felt like defending the shithole of a Commonwealth from her expectations. 

“I don’t get why you’re being so hostile with me about this. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, I’m saying that I don’t understand how this happened. Nobody was prepared for this, not even Vault-Tec.” She sounded sad, and Hancock felt his indignation drip away. There was no need to take this out on her. 

“Sister, your expectation might work in a completely abandoned place, but things go screwy when people are involved. Life always finds a way, and where there’s humans, there’s someone willing to fuck up everyone’s day so nobody has a bigger pile of dirt than he does. There’s some fundamental flaw in humanity that’s cool with seeing their neighbors succeed, up until someone else has something nicer. We’ve fucked up the terrain so much after the bombs that I’ll be surprised if some places ever recover.”

That was met with a brief silence, then a quiet, “Hancock?”

“Mm?” 

“Can I borrow your flag? I didn’t think this ‘jumping into a river’ thing through very well.” 

Hancock bit back a laugh and unknotted the battered fabric from his hips. “Then I’m blaming you if my pants fall down.”

“I’ll accept that.” She took the flag, and moments later said, “Alright, decent. Your turn.” 

And there she was, dripping wet and wrapped in an upside-down flag, and God bless America, alright. “Damn, you make a man feel patriotic.”

She laughed and passed him the soap. “What can I say? You’re an inspiration, John Hancock. Now move on so I can change.”

He bowed in a grand gesture, then waited for her to finish dressing and take her guard post before he slipped into the water, clothes and all. He hadn’t thought to change out of them before getting into the suit, so they needed as much of a wash as they could get before they hit the road again. Lucky for them that Abraxo aged so well, at least. 

“Hey, Hancock?”

He had just taken off his shirt to scrub the worst of the funk out. “Yeah?”

“I was really scared back there.” A thoughtful silence, then, “I realize that I act like you a lot out here. I have to go into all this with some dick-swinging so that I feel like I’m in charge, and I was so bad at it before I met you. I used to get by on skill, and that’s just not enough out here.”

It took him a moment to respond to that. “I’m not anybody worth emulating, Sister. You’re more than capable of handling yourself out here. Your bite is a lot worse than my bark, ya dig? Even if I hadn’t made it out of there, you would have.”

“But you did,” she replied forcefully. She turned to meet his eyes, and he felt stripped bare, like the contents of his sunken chest were ripped out and left floating in the water for her appraisal. She broke contact first, with a murmured, “Sorry. But I mean it. I’m better out here with you. It’s really selfish of me to ask this, but I’d like to keep going with you.”

He couldn’t restrain a bark of laughter. “Selfish? Nora, I’m fuckin’ useless. Ghouls have two jobs, to die really fucking slowly and to resist radiation, and I couldn’t do either. I’m only gonna slow you down.” 

In the silence, he finished undressing and scrubbed the rest of his clothes, then set them out on the pier by her feet to dry. She chuckled softly. “I’ve waited over two hundred years for a friend like you. I can go slow for a while. I won’t hold it against you if you want to go back to Goodneighbor to recover, but don’t do it for my sake, alright?” 

Hancock leaned heavily on the pier, feeling like if he let go, he’d be equally likely to sink to the bottom of the lake as he would be to just float up to the sky—and he was _sober_. “You’re good for me, too,” he admitted carefully. “And let’s be real here, I’d follow you anywhere. I just don’t want to be the reason you don’t get what you want.” 

“We’ll see about that,” she said all cryptic-like. “Ready for some clothes, fancy man?”

The weird mood dissipated, finally, and Hancock slipped back into a more comfortable mask for himself. “Well, if you insist. Wouldn’t want you tempted by all this hot bare flesh through the night.”

“Pish-posh, I’ve felt you, and you’re room temperature at best.” She handed him a wad of clothing she’d pilfered from one of the shacks on the lake shore and turned away while he changed.

“Yeah, but that don’t roll off the tongue so easy, does it?” He hadn’t gotten a good look at the outfit before, but now that he was trying to fit it to his body, he was beginning to have questions. Some kind of fisherman’s waders over a shirt far too large for him, and an old dead guy’s skivvies that he would most certainly pass on. “Really, Nora?”

She turned to look him over and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, though her smile reached her eyes. “It’ll have to do. Gotta keep the animal magnetism contained and all.”

“You’re adorable,” she kinda squeaked. “C’mon, let’s go set up camp. I’ll kill the food this time if you get the fire going.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” he drawled all piratey, and her giggles made the whole indignity thing just that much more tolerable.


	9. Any Port in a Radstorm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Institute isn't the most terrifying thing on his mind lately, actually.

When he was a kid, little John McDonough had ferocious nightmares. Kids of his particular status in the Lower Fields regularly went to bed hungry even when their parents fought hard for a decent life, so they-- he-- often had feelings of longing that stuck with him all day.

When he was old enough to leave the stadium to scavenge with his father, he watched a neighbor get gored by a deathclaw, and his dreams remolded around that; and it wasn’t just the blood or the guts, or the screams, or the woman’s useless gun firing again and again against the beast, no. It was later at home, safe in their shack, and ol’ pops didn’t even care. 

We survived and she didn’t, he’d explained. We survived _because_ she didn’t. A creature like that only knows the hunt, and it’s suicide to expect anything else. 

When he dreamed after that, he saw himself held up by his family like an offering, and it wasn’t the deathclaw that got him; every damn time it was the people around him tearing into his flesh. Kill or be killed, his dad would say; survival of the fittest, said his brother.   
His mother always delivered the killing blow. Tore right into his neck while she told him how much better off they’d be if they didn’t have his useless mouth to feed. He wasn’t as ambitious as his brother, he wasn’t strong like his dad, and he wasn’t as smart as she was, so what else could he possibly bring to the table? Didn’t this just solve everything?

He hadn’t dreamed of that in years. He was Hancock now, and he was alive while they were dead, or in his brother’s case, dead in every way that mattered to a man. So he wasn’t the smartest, strongest, or most ambitious son-of-a-bitch out there, but he was enough. 

That night, it was Nora who held him down, bringing him to his knees with a glance and a little, ‘Shh, you’re alright,’ whispered in his ear. When the yellow-shrouded figure arrived, he bared his neck to her fangs, and he was not afraid. 

He woke with a gasp, drowning in someone else’s clothes, choked by the turtleneck in the shirt. He tore at the cloth with shaky fingers until it ripped free. Across the room, Nora was sitting up on her bedroll, clutching the dog tight and breathing so very fast. 

Guess it was just the night for it. “You, too?” 

Nora nodded, unable to speak. He couldn’t fault her for that one damn bit. “Want company?”

Another silent nod, and he was dragging his bedroll over by hers, along with a bag of treats. “Somethin’ to get you back to Earth, or something to get you out of it?”

“Out.”

“I’ve got you.” He fished out his Ultrajet and passed it to her. “Jet don’t do too much for a ghoul, so this is a stronger version. It’s a good buzz for me, so it’s gonna feel real intense for you. Mellow. Slow you down and give you time to think. Sound like something you want?” 

She thumbed at the inhaler, fidgeting while she tried to get her breathing steady. “One of us should be sober. It’s not safe here.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ve got us.” When she was out, he’d pop some Mentats to stay sharp, but he didn’t want to sour her trip by going introspective. Ultra and Mentats weren’t really party chems, after all.

She took a hesitant puff, coughing just a bit after. She shuddered as it hit her hard and fast. “It feels cold,” she whispered, so soft he had to lean in to hear it. “I hate the cold.”

“I know, darlin’.” She was still shivering, and who could blame her after what she’d been through? He pulled his blanket over her and wrapped and arm around her shoulders to give her a physical anchor if she needed it. At the touch, she grabbed him tight and curled against him, shaking hard against the chill she felt. 

“I’m right here, Nora. I’ll be right here with you. You’re gonna feel a lot of things, so if you can think of something you need, you talk to me if you can, okay?”

Her voice was muffled against his thigh when she asked, “Will you talk to me? Doesn’t matter what.” 

He stroked her hair. “Yeah, I can do that. Let me tell you about the first time I ever took Jet.”

By the time he stopped for a Mentats break, she’d long-since glazed out, breathing slow and steady, lost to whatever zen she found in the chemical haze. He’d be there if it went south, but the best thing for her now was to let her ride it out and find her answers. 

He stashed two ‘tats in his cheeks to melt slowly while he talked. She wouldn’t remember a word of it later, probably, but she made for a captive audience, anyway.

“Like I was saying, all I wanted was something to eat, and I had no caps, no pants, no credit, and my buddies were assholes who convinced me to do it. Now, Takahashi hadn’t set up in Diamond City yet, so what we had for noodles would make you weep, but I was high and I was hungry. It took three days before someone found me in that chimney…”

 

 

They crawled in to Sanctuary two days later. Running out of potable water had forced them to detour by Graygarden, which happened to be staffed by the kinds of robots who didn’t have the ‘shoot first and ask weird game show questions later’ mentality, luckily for them. They’d stocked up on supplies and left on good terms with them, with a promise to send Minutemen assistance the next time raiders hit, but the road back to Sanctuary was packed with all kinds of animosity. Raiders, then bugs, then fuckin’ waves of robots shooting at them while beep-booping something about cleansing the Commonwealth.

It sucked ass, frankly.

Nora was exhausted, the dog was hungry, and Hancock was so strung out on Psycho that he didn’t need to be in polite company just then. They barely acknowledged the guards on the way in, and flat-out ignored Garvey when they passed him on his rounds, solely focused on making it the last few steps into Nora’s home. 

They collapsed together on the couch, Nora shaking against him in her sleep while he rode out the Psycho high facing the door with teeth bared, ready to disembowel the next motherfucker to start with them. 

 

Things were clearer in the morning. They’d each gotten a decent meal and a bath, and while Nora went off with General Fancy-Hat for a mission debrief, Hancock stayed behind to catch up on the rest his body was aching for. 

The yellow woman came to him again. Isolde grinned at him with jaw split wide to flash row upon row of vicious teeth. When she bit into his shoulder, his blood flowed green over his ruined chest, and—and Nora was there on his other side to lick it up, poisoning herself with his corruption, her tongue hot against his ruined flesh. He tried to push her away, but she was insistent, wild on it, licking and—barking. 

Barking?

He cracked his eyes to see Dogmeat wagging his fluffy tail at him, evidently pleased with his success at waking him up. He groaned and turned over to bury his face in the couch while Nora praised the stupid mongrel for a job well done. “Oh, come on, Hancock, are you going to sleep all day?”

“How in the hell are you so damn chipper?” He threw a battered pillow at her, which was so terribly exciting for the dog that he caught it in the air and ripped it to shreds before it landed.

Well, so much for a decent nap, then.

“We’re making progress, Hancock. We have a general location on that Institute Courser I was telling you about.”

He yawned and sat up, giving her an appraising look. She looked so much better after her date with Garvey, so fiercely determined to get this done, and—well, hell, a man’s gotta admire that kinda drive. “Mm, that one with the chip… thing.”

“Yeah, that. I need to get one back to Virgil as soon as possible. I’m not dragging you across the Glowing Sea again, but will you come with me for this?” And she made it sound like an honest question, like he wouldn’t go to Hell and back for her. 

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. We headin’ out now?”

“As soon as you’re ready. It’s near C.I.T., just above Diamond City. We can get there by nightfall if we hurry.”

He stood and stretched out, rubbing at the phantom pain in his shoulder. “That sounds awful. Let’s do it. Just gotta grab my gun.” He donned his coat and slipped back into his boots, then stepped out the side door where he’d left the maintenance to a Minuteman volunteer. The kid had done a good job, too; the thing fuckin’ sparkled. He’d have to find him later and tip him in caps or bubble gum or whatever those do-gooders used for fun.

“You’re walkin’ into a deathtrap, you know,” Mama Murphy called to him. She still had that nice chair stationed in the carport, and that was one way to spend your retirement, sure. “A Courser makes more enemies than friends, but his enemies are not your friends. The metaphor doesn’t hold up too well here.”

“How do you even know these things, Mama M?” He leaned against a workbench to load the gun, fascinated. She was so damn mysterious! Maybe he could convince her to bring her act to the Third Rail sometime. 

“I got me the Sight, kid, but it don’t come cheap. Gonna need some Buffout to be strong enough to See it.”

“Shit, Mama, you don’t play, do you?” He was reaching for his pack when Nora cleared her throat from the doorway, frowning. 

“Is this a good idea? I’m not about to tell anyone what to do, but you’re not as young as you used to be, ma’am.”

She laughed at that and took the bottle Hancock offered her, shaking out a few pills easily. “And that’s why I leave the hard part to you. I just want you kids safe out there, and a little foresight goes a long way. Here it goes…”

Hancock had seen fortune tellers pass through Diamond City before, charlatans with a slick sales pitch and a carefully vague promise to the desperate that luck was on the side. Mama Murphy, on the other hand, straight up gave them a deactivation code for the synth they were out to kill. 

Seriously, if she’d been in Diamond City when he was young, she’d have been rolling in mountains of chems for that. He whistled low while Nora, quick on her feet with a notepad, jotted down the code. 

“Whether that works or not, you’ve got a real talent, lady.” He accepted the bottle back, sharing an easy grin with her.

“The Sight doesn’t lead us wrong. Now you just remember what I told you before and everything’s gonna be just fine. You two have a rough path ahead of you, and I’m tired from all that Seein’.”

On their way out, Nora asked, “What did she tell you before that’s so important?”

“Little pep talk,” he purred. “Wasn’t as specific as, hey, don’t cross the big radioactive hellscape, but they can’t all be winners.”

“She told me that Shaun was definitely alive out there,” she said, soft. “She told me something before that worked on these bad guys who’d taken Nick hostage, something really personal about the guy’s history. I really want to believe her, Hancock.”

He remembered her gaze going right through him, seeing all his fears and insecurities laid out, nothing hidden beneath his cultivated swagger and classy duds—seeing all that and giving him hope that this fierce woman had a place for him in her life. 

“So do I, sister.”


	10. Par for the Courser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One journey goes surprisingly well, one a little less so, and man, was that last trip was one hell of a ride.
> 
> Explicit content ahead.

You know, the way the Railroad went on about synths and the Institute and all that shit, you’d think that Coursers would be fuckin’ terrifying or something.

Well, they were, actually. They just happened to have a secret weapon. Nora had the _secret password_. The motherfucker was standing ankle-deep in Gunner blood, was squaring off to shuffle them off their mortal coils, and just, boom, down he goes. 

Nora didn’t even flinch, having expected a lot more out of her doped up chem-fiends than he would have, personally, but there you have it. They lived, the bad guy bricked, the hostage was rescued, and they now had a shiny bit of synth brain to march across the radioactive hellscape.

Hancock could have been sitting pretty in his office where almost nobody was trying to shoot him. God, did he feel _alive_ out here.

But a funny thing happened on the way over. Nora’s little wristwatch was pinging her a distress signal near the C.I.T. ruins that had nothing to do with her Courser at all. They were on a time crunch and couldn’t investigate it just then, but the whole thing had taken less time than they’d expected, and she was kind of a bleeding heart when it came to things like that—not that Hancock minded, of course. He didn’t like to see someone taken advantage of, but her heart was in the right place, and how could he fault her for wanting to make the Commonwealth a better place?

So instead of marching home to their beds, they detoured to the Cambridge Police Station, where a fuckton of ferals were engaged with a smaller number—perhaps a half-fuckton—of some pricks in military gear. Hancock had a bad feeling about them to begin with, but Nora and her dog had thrown themselves into the fray, and he wasn’t about to stand by and watch them have all the fun. 

Well, fun until some fuckhead in power armor pulled a laser gun to his head and pulled the trigger. He dodged the beam thanks to the little pick-me-up Psycho he’d hit before jumping in, but the rest of the fight blurred around him after that. This fucker wanted to start something with _him_? He’d just swung his shotgun around to retaliate when Nora grabbed his elbow. “Hancock, cover me!”

He made the briefest eye contact with the man, flashing some fang, and turned to follow her into the fire. She’d saved that guy’s life twice already and he’d never even know it. 

 

“So, Paladin, how long have you been camping out here?”

Nora was all sweetness and sunshine to the survivors, after. Turns out the slug in his shell was the leader of a pack of Brotherhood soldiers, and wasn’t that just so damn nice? He didn’t care for how friendly she was after all that, but she hadn’t seen what this Danse guy had tried, and he hadn’t had a chance to get her alone to bitch about it. 

And now here they were. _Socializing_.

“It’s not exactly what I’d call camping, ma’am. We’ve been on a recon mission for some time. We appreciate your help. You have a good eye for marksmanship and exactly the sort of virtues we look for in a recruit.” The guy didn’t acknowledge Hancock even a little as he tried to poach her. There it was, a shiny little offer to join the Brotherhood of Steel for all of her valiant efforts to further their cause, to ‘help her accomplish her goals while clearing the trash out of the Commonwealth’ or some horseshit. 

“Oh, that’s very kind. My husband was a soldier, you know. A very long time ago. He was so brave, I always admired that about him.” He knew her well enough that the honey dripping from her tongue had a bitter bite. She gave him a quick glance, a little eyebrow quirk asking ‘ _Wanna play?_ ’

He inclined his head to the side and searched his coat for a cigarette. _Yeah, I’ll bite._

“But I already have help.” She reached back and took his cigarette with a warm smile.

One of the scribes by Paladin Tincan scoffed at her. “That’s just a ghoul. We have resources you can’t even imagine.”

“Mm. But this ghoul is very, very good at accomplishing my goals. He’s quite resourceful, too.” She took a deep drag of his smoke and held it back up, and this is what she meant? He could play this. While they huffed, Hancock slid in behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, nuzzling at her shoulder while he reclaimed his cigarette. 

“Ready to head out? All this ‘righteous justice’ business has got me all excited.” He unpeeled himself from her and exhaled smoke at Danse in passing, not bothering to look at his stupid human-supremacist face on his way out. Nora giggled and tucked herself up close to him like some sort of starry-eyed damsel. “Oh, not in front of the _heroes_ , honey. Good luck with your ethnic cleansing or whatever.”

He gave her ass a good squeeze on the way out just to make it _abundantly clear_ for them. She slapped him once the door closed behind them, but she was laughing, so, worth it. Hancock offered her the cigarette again. “You’re just cheeky, aren’t you?”

“Me? I didn’t grab handfuls of you to prove a point if we’re talking cheeks now.” She leaned heavily against him as she started to recognize that their smoke was not just tobacco. 

“The point of antagonizing the racists? And you most certainly did grab at me, Nora. Couldn’t keep your hands off this hot zombie body. Just think of the kind of nightmares they’ll have tonight, huh?”

“Or the weirdest wet dreams. In my time, the loudest voices against something were the ones with the deepest obsessions.” She checked the time and groaned. “It’s so late. That took longer than it had to.”

“It’s been a hell of a day,” he agreed. Now that they had put a little distance between themselves and the police station, the adrenaline was wearing off and it was getting hard to focus. “It’s just over an hour back from here if we hustle. Why don’t you tell me a story to keep your mind sharp?”

She sighed and readjusted her pack. “What do you want to hear about?”

The scene from before burned behind his eyelids, featuring stupid soldiers with stupid perfect teeth and bigotry. “Something about that assclown back there reminded you of Nate. Want to unpack that?”

Nora barked a laugh. “Actually, know what? I do. It’s been hard to think about him, like… Like I expect to get him back and I don’t want to jinx it. Is that stupid or what?”

Hancock shook his head. “Not gonna hear it from me. Can’t help what you’re feelin’. You had a good life, and now you’ve got this. I’d be a little resentful of that, myself.”

She glanced over at him, expression heavy. “It wasn’t perfect then, and it isn’t all shitty now. We were always so tense when the war started moving home. We had soldiers in power armor in Sanctuary Hills by the end of it. Tanks. People going missing. I was so scared they were going to drag Nate back into it. But… he and I were good. We were partners. There were these expectations on TV of what was a man’s job, what was women’s work, y’know? But that wasn’t our life. Families were defined as the people who made you whole. Our neighbors, they were two women and the worst dog ever, and I think there was definitely a triad somewhere on the street, and we were the two of us, our baby, and our Codsworth. I felt like I could handle anything the war threw at us if I had my family beside me.”

He flinched. Her voice was strong and steady, but he knew her well enough by now to see the cracks in the façade. “And you did. You still are. You’ve got a lot of people on your side now, and not just the ones looking for some easy caps. Nick and Codsworth, your doggo. Me. You’re like a magnet for non-human freaks of nature. Not sure exactly what Garvey’s game is, but he’s gonna stand by you, too. And if you chose to play nice with the Brotherhood, hell, I bet they could help you find your son better than I could. Danse’s power armor stands up better in Glowing Sea than my baby-soft skin, apparently.”

She slowed, looking over him for a long moment, then took his hand. While his heart exploded in his chest, she ran her thumb over the back of his hand. 

Her hand was warm, but her wedding ring burned like ice against his skin.

“You liar, you’re not baby-soft at all.” She left her hand there in his.

He glanced at her, eyes wide, trying to assess her expression and failing hard. “Yeah, guess not. Suppose I haven’t squeezed many babies.”

She laced their fingers, still looking ahead, not meeting his gaze. Was she high? Is that was this was? “I’ll let you squeeze Shaun when we find him. But… he’s at least ten now. Maybe older. I have no idea how much of his life he’s had without me.” Her voice was cracking, her grip tightening, and… shit, yes, those were tears. 

He stopped and pulled her close, hugging her tight. She all but collapsed against him, straining to muffle any sounds, trying so hard to still stay strong. They’d need to talk about this, especially the part where this was a terrible idea and she’d have to tell him that they were just friends, really, and he’d misread this entirely--

\--then she grabbed him by the lapels, looked him in the eye, and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

_Fuck_. “Yeah, that’d be alright,” he said like a dummy, frozen in place until he eventually got his brain rebooted enough to slide his hands down to her hips. Her hands went for his face, feeling rough skin where she expected—deserved—smooth, and she kissed him anyway, light and testing on the corner of his mouth. 

Her Pip-Boy protested the proximity. He flinched and backed off at the Geiger counter’s sudden ticking, and she sighed—almost growled, really, at the sudden loss of contact. “Hancock—“

“It’s not safe,” he said, interrupting. “Nora. I... I think we need to talk about this when we get back. We’re exposed out here.” He meant to predators, but hell if he didn’t feel it personally, too. His veneer of cool had fucked right off, and there he was stripped bare for her, every thought written plain on his face. 

She laughed bitterly and turned away from him to check her Pip-Boy’s map. “Right, what was I thinking. You can pretend it didn’t happen if you want, okay?” 

He came up behind her and squeezed her, resting his chin on her shoulder. Her Geiger counter protested at her again as he whispered, “Don’t get me wrong, Nora, I’ve wanted you from the beginning. Unless you have regrets, I’m not pretending anything. We’ve got time, so you just think about what _you_ want.” 

He nipped her ear and broke off, feeling a little thrill at her gasp, even if it was followed by a sharp tick of the Pip-Boy. He took the lead to navigate them back, shotgun hanging loose in his hands, pretty goddamn confident that he’d be useless in a fight if he had to watch her ass swaying all the way back to Sanctuary Hills. 

 

Some insects hounded them on the way back, but most of the route was clear. It was obscenely late when they got back, and although Hancock was still tired from the previous day’s journey, he thrummed with a nervous energy as they greeted the guards and retreated to Nora’s home. Codsworth welcomed them both warmly, if a little less so for the dog—“And don’t you get those muddy paws on the furniture, you mongrel!”—and he seemed content to bugger off to guard the neighborhood now that his person was home safe. 

That left them alone, and he didn’t expect it to be so damn awkward. They looked at each other for a long moment. 

“I’m going to—“

“We should—“

They both cut themselves off. Finally, Hancock laughed, took off his coat, and sank into the couch, beckoning her to join him. She kicked her boots off and curled up against his side, and he slung his arm around her shoulders to play with her manageably short hair. “You’d think I’d be better at this,” he admitted. “Get all tongue-tied around you.”

“With your shameless flirting, I gave it 50-50 that you were either a massive playboy or a giant nerd,” she laughed, leaning into his hand—then pulled off her Pip-Boy and stuffed it behind the cushions, because she’d figured out already that groping on a ghoul wasn’t exactly great for the health.

“Just one or the other? I’ve worn both those hats before, darlin’.” He tipped his tricorn at her, waggling his eyebrows. “M’lady.”

She snorted and tipped the hat further down to cover his face. “You’re ridiculous. I like that about you. I like a lot of things about you.”

“Yeah?” He put the hat aside. “As much as I could listen to you sing my praises all night, I think we should get a few things straightened out. I’m not gonna rush into this and scare you off, alright?”

Nora started to protest, then reconsidered. “I… okay, yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I was…. I guess I was feeling impulsive earlier. I didn’t even know if you were interested.” 

“Are you kidding?” He shot her an incredulous look. “You’re smart, you’re gorgeous, and you keep life exciting—fuck, it’s like you were gift-wrapped and dropped right in my lap. I didn’t make a move on you because you’ve got more important shit than me to worry about.”

She frowned at him, then pulled away to sit up straight. “You’re important to me, Hancock. And if I was dropped in your lap—“ and _fuck_ , she got up and settled right over him, “—then there’s got to be a reason.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t gotta be a reason for anything. We just need to take things as they come—and don’t turn that filthy on me, I don’t think my poor heart could take it right now.”

“If you insist.” She pressed her cheek to his shoulder, sighing when his hands rose to rest on her back. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

He couldn’t remember. Something about responsibility and the dangers both personal and socially of being a dirty ghoulfucker, he was sure, but all he could focus on was the burn of skin under his hands as he crept up the back of her shirt, and that sweet, hot pressure pinning him down. “Nate,” he groaned, and that stilled her wandering hands. “I gotta know how you’re doing there.”

_I need to know if you’re lookin’ at me and seein’ him_ , he didn’t say, but she seemed to get it anyway.

“I loved him. I still love him. I understand that I can’t have him,” she sighed. “And… it hurts. I see him all over this house. I sometimes think I still smell his cologne in the couch, which is… absurd, of course, but. But I know he would want me to keep living.” She shifted, grinding herself down, and his hips bucked unconsciously. “Fuck, I bet he’d enjoy watching. You’re his type.”

“Hnng?” What were words, how did he English? 

“He liked mouthy guys with some bite behind their bark. The military was good to him for that; he fucked his way across the country on tour, and he liked to watch them with me here at home.” She tipped his chin up with her thumb and bumped their noses—or what was left of a nose— with a giggle.

“You two were some kinky motherfuckers,” he whistled. “Guess you weren’t joking about those handcuffs.”

“Why, interested?”

He swallowed. “No--- fuck, we still need to talk about this. I think you’re still high and I don’t want you to regret this.” 

She went still, some sort of emotion crossing her face. “One, you don’t get to tell me what I will and won’t regret. But… two, as I have no idea what you had me smoke earlier, you might be right. Everything just feels so intense. It’s been a long time since I’ve been wanted,” she admitted, sheepish.

He smiled and dropped his hands to her ass and scooted her forward. It was going to be an ugly conversation once the clothes started to go, but there he was, unmistakably hard for her. “Now you’re the liar. You’ve been wanted for ages. Preston, too. Danse tonight looked like he’d be willing to take a bite of that, too.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, he can keep his bites. Okay, then… touched. It’s been lonely.”

“I feel you there,” he admitted. “Lot of us ghouls don’t see much use in trying. This? Is not exactly a hot commodity on the market.”

“Maybe I don’t get modern girls, then. I like your chutzpah.” She nipped down his neck, and he leaned back to give her better access.

“The fuck is a chutzpah?” He slipped his hands under her shirt and thumbed at the hooks of her bra, considering. 

“I… okay, we’ll get into Yiddish idioms later. You, Mr. Responsible, need to decide if you still want me to stop. Because I want to do terrible things to you right now.” She nipped at his collarbone before biting down harder into his throat, and he whined low in his throat. 

“And I want to throw you back into this couch and have you singin’ my name, sister. But I’ll want that tomorrow, and the day after, and before you go across the Sea again, and I’ll be right there when you’re out of it, too.” He reluctantly pulled his hands free and rested them on her shoulders, breathing hard. “Not makin’ this easy, though.”

“Mmm. Does it mean I’m making it hard?”

He surprised himself with a laugh and pulled her in. “Smug bastard, still want that kiss?” 

She flushed, faintly, and closed the distance between them. It was chaste at first, a tentative exploration that left him wanting more. She moaned her approval when he bit at her lip, opening easily for him to deepen the kiss. 

One of them needed to breathe eventually. She was the one to break away, panting, and everything in him screamed to drag her back in. Instead, “Okay, really, you need to get off me or I’m not gonna be able to stop.”

She laughed, breathless. “Get off you before I get you off? I bet you could use it. You’re so _tense_.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that.” He helped her extricate herself from his lap, and he shuddered at the obvious scent of arousal. “I’ll be taking care of myself soon.”

“You, too?” She booped his nose, then turned away from him. “I’ll be in the bath for… well, for a while, now that you’ve given me a need to cool down, you jerk.”

He pinched her ass since she displayed it so invitingly. “Yeah, I will be jerking, now that you mention it, and that’s gonna be your fault.”

Nora turned to meet his gaze, flushed. “Yeah? Thinking of me?”

“Of course.”

“You’re going to tell me about it tomorrow.”

Fuck, did that go straight to his cock. “Yes.”

“Good.” She left him there to listen to the taps running in the bathroom, not particularly subtle with the walls in such poor repair, and it would have felt intrusive if she hadn’t so blatantly intended for him to hear the little splashes and gasps. 

His own was a quieter affair, freeing his dick from the confines of his trousers for a quick tug, sad as it was. Going ghoul hadn’t been kind to him, and he’d been horrified when, surprise, all or part of your dick can rot off, amongst the noses and stray toes and the rest. His prick wasn’t exactly much for giving a lady the ride of her life, but it was functional enough for this, and he’d gotten pretty clever working around it.

Still, he wasn’t particularly excited to share this particular bit of bad news with her. 

After, he cleaned himself up and stretched out on the floor by the couch, satisfied just enough to calm down for some sleep. They had an atrocious trip ahead of them, and it was already so late that he could see the sun trying to break through the horizon. She wasn’t finished in there, but he felt a warm thrill that he was on her mind, a resurgence of that ache deep in his belly. 

Man, what a hell of a day.

 

 

Isolde came to him that night, except the radioactive hell of the Glowing Sea had melted away into a yellow-tinted mockery of Nora’s home. Isolde writhed on his lap while Nora watched with cold, glassy eyes, her throat torn out and yellow, bitter blood oozing from the wounds while Isolde’s forked tongue tickled his neck. 

Hancock’s hands were bound behind him, and every moment drained him of his will to fight it. 

Isolde dug her fingers into his shoulder, talons piercing through skin and muscle to curl around his collarbones, and whispered, “Not yet.”

Something cold hit his ribs—his own blood?—and he was out.

 

He woke up with an armful of dog, a stiff back, and an empty couch above him. He extracted himself from the pile of limbs and fur and wrinkled his nose at his new cologne of musty dog stank. He shambled to the bathroom to solve at least one of his problems, but--

Well, the bathtub was occupied. His instinct was to turn away, but unless he’d been on one hell of a trip last night, it was probably within their parameters to sneak a peek. Nora had fallen asleep at some point, and she had to be fuckin’ freezing in that bathwater—Sanctuary’s plumbing had only ever been lukewarm since its reconstruction—but there she was, displayed like a feast of skin, curled up just enough to preserve some modesty. 

He sat on the lid of the commode and fished her icy fingers out of the water. “Hey, Vaultcicle, did you mean to do this?”

She rolled towards him, squinting as awareness hit her like a punch to the head. “Hell are you doing,” she mumbled, shivering. “Oh. OH. Fuck, I fell asleep.” She looked up at the sunlight streaming through the holes in the wall and groaned. “Too old for this shit.”

He grabbed a towel from the shelf and held it open, smirking. “Wear yourself out last night?”

It took her a minute to figure out what he meant, and he could see her face as she put it all together. She was bare-ass naked, they’d had A Moment, and things had every right to be awkward as hell this morning. 

After she chewed on it some, she shrugged. “What can I say? I was inspired.” She stepped into the towel and wrapped it around herself. “Were you checking me out?”

“Yep.” He pulled down another towel to drape over her head, because he was reasonably confident that women had some sort of hair-towel trick, and it probably started like that. 

She looked at him curiously and did not, in fact, do the hair-twisty thing. “Like what you see?”

“Mmm. You looked frozen. Nice tits, though.”

“Hancock, I am too cold and too tired to be upset with you, so I’m going to take that as a compliment.” She stepped in to him, leaned in real close, and said, “Could you move? You’re blocking the doorway.”

He blinked, surprised, and laughed hard as he stepped aside with a flourish. “You are such a charmer in the morning.”

She flipped him off as she walked off, leaving him to face his own struggles with cold showers. He probably needed one after that view if he had any hope of getting shit done that day.

 

 

She was still wearing the towels, except she’d done the hair thing and she’d thrown his coat on over them, feet tucked up under her on the couch while she fiddled with her Pip-Boy. “Any port in a storm when you’re cold, huh?”

She shrugged, grinning up at him. “Now I am the mayor. I have your powers.”

“You’d make a cute mayor, I’ll give ya that. Is the towel part of your campaign?” He settled on the floor beside her, and she dropped a hand to his neck to toy with the ruffles on his shirt.

“Campaign? Did you campaign? I just figured I’d march in and blow up some bad guys until everyone loved me.” He snickered at that, and she continued, “The towel’s the best part, actually. You can be my vice-mayor. You answer all the correspondences related to towel.”

“I think you’re thinking of vice-mayor-secretary. I don’t answer letters. Bet Fahrenheit is loving the mountain of paperwork I left for her.” He pressed his cheek to her knee, frowning. “You are really cold. Need to get you moving or something.”

A pause, a silence long enough for Hancock to wonder what he’d said wrong, then, “You could warm me up.” The hand on his neck turned possessive, gripping tighter, and he turned to look up at her. 

“Yeah? That still seem like a good idea in the daylight?”

She let one knee drop to the side, and Hancock, while oblivious to many things, could read this hint loud and clear. He shifted to kneel in front of her, thumbs hooking the edge of her towel. “There’s something you gotta know about this. Need to use protection.”

She flushed. “About that. I had a surgery after Shaun was born—we only planned to have one…”

Hancock blinked, processing. “You mean—oh, Nora, god, no, that’s not what I meant at all. Rad-X. You were thinking I’d…?” And wasn’t that a thought? He nipped at her thigh, grinning at her pleased yelp. “Ghouls are sterile. I know I’m known for breaking the rules on what a ghoul is or isn’t, but I’m pretty damn confident on this one.” He reached for his pack to find her the drug, while she said,

“Have a pretty big sample size for that research?”

He readied the syringe. “A few. Most smooth women who’d hop into bed with me are in it for something else.”

“And what is that?” She flinched as the needle sank into her thigh, and he tested the injection site with a lick. The Pip-Boy had nothing to say about it.

“Got a reputation for having a real silver tongue here, and it’s only half to do with my amazing oratory skills. Wanna peer-review that study?”

She leaned back, crying out as he slipped his hands beneath her and pulled her up to his face, burying his face in her cunt without a bit of hesitation. With her emphatic and sober consent, he trusted she’d stop if there was a problem, and until she realized how fucked-up it was to let him have her like this, he was going to savor every moment. 

She was so damn _responsive_. Months of celibacy had left her aching for touch, and he was quick to figure out what she liked, what didn’t work so great, and what had her humping into his mouth like a bitch in heat. 

Turns out that she was into biting more so than licking, but a firm suck to the clit was exactly what she needed. She unraveled under his mouth, crying his name when he brought his fingers to the party. He brought her right up the edge with his mouth, then pulled away and replaced the attention to her clit with his fingers to keep her hovering there while he explored with his tongue. 

While she was nice and tense and shaking under him, he crawled up her body, pinning her under his body weight. “Having a good time, darlin’?”

She growled and tried to push his hand where she wanted it, but he kept his touch light. “You’re a goddamn tease, Hancock.”

“And you’re impatient. You want to come?”

“ _Hancock_.” 

“Oh, I do like how you say that. I want to hear it from you; you like getting played by a ghoul, huh?” He drove a pair of fingers into her and twisted sharply, scouting out the spot to make her shout. He thumped at it just enough to wind her up, then, “Tell me.”

“Fuck, Hancock, yes!”

“Yes, what?” He started to pull them away, thrilled when she clenched around him.

“I love what you do to me,” she panted. He nuzzled at her breast over the towel and started tapping a slow rhythm inside her. “I’ve been thinking of this for so long. I knew you’d be—hnng—amazing.”

He picked up the pace. “That right?”

She was squirming on his fingers, desperate for just a little bit more, and he dangled it just out of reach. “I don’t care that you’re a ghoul, fuck… I _love_ that you’re so confident, I can’t help wanting you. You’re ridiculous and sexy and so—Hancock, ah!”

He ground the heel of his hand against her clit while he pulsed his fingers and let her ride it out. “Could listen to you all day, sweetheart,” he purred, slowing down just a bit until she groaned and pushed his hand away. 

“Get over here,” she demanded, falling back into the couch, and he crawled over her as carefully as he could to kiss her mouth. 

Really, if there was going to be a terrible time for Codsworth to come back in, at least they’d managed to accomplish getting her off beforehand. “Are you alright, mum? I heard—oh! Oh, dear,” stuttered the worst robot ever, and that was a hell of an understatement, wasn’t it?

“It’s not what—no, it is what it looks like,” she admitted, squirming under Codsworth’s scrutiny. 

He floated there a moment, processing, then finally decided, “Well, I do believe I’ve left the oven on. Please excuse me, mum,” before he went back outside.

Hancock muffled a laugh against her chest, and Nora groaned. “I will never be able to look him in his three eyes again.”

He tangled a hand through her hair, grinning. “Gonna regret that?”

“Mmm, not if you can do that again.”

 

Needless to say, they did not depart for the Glowing Sea that day.


	11. Punchdrunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither one of 'em is a model from an old-world skin mag, but that doesn't make the spark between them any less of a beautiful thing. 
> 
> Graphic descriptions of imperfect bodies that Nick Valentine wishes he could un-learn.

Hancock dreamed of sandstorms. He saw himself as he used to be, smooth and whole and handsome, but the sand buffed at his skin and wore him into a tired husk. The yellow winds tossed him around like something weightless, filling his lungs with grit until he choked. He didn’t need to breathe, not technically, but panic started to rise all the same, heart racing, tumbling endlessly. 

His eyes snapped open and he sucked in a desperate breath. Nora flinched and pulled away from him—had she been touching him?

Ah. A particular hardness was pressing against her belly, and she’d had curious fingers—well, what did she expect to happen with the two of them sleeping on the same couch? He was draped over her chest, legs all tangled, probably crushing her with his sharp elbows if not exposing her to dangerous radiation, even through their clothing. 

Hancock had directed all of her attention above his waist. She’d offered a few times yesterday, but he deflected smoothly back to her often enough that she dropped the issue and let him focus on showing her a good time. There’d be plenty of time for him later, he’d promised. 

She looked almost guilty for getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. “Well, good morning to you, too, sunshine.”

Her skin flushed all the way down to her chest. He fought an urge to chase it with his tongue. “Sorry. You poked me. I’ve been curious. It—I shouldn’t have done that, though.”

Hancock chuckled softly against her neck, breathing in the scent of sweat and sex with wonderfully clear lungs. “Can’t blame you for bein’ curious. Isn’t there a sayin’ about that? ‘Curiosity killed the cat?’”

“’But satisfaction brought it back.’ Are you… satisfied?” She slid her hands to his hips, thumbing under the shirt for a brief stroke on skin. “I kept thinking I was ignoring you yesterday. Is this something we can talk about?” 

“Don’t worry about me. What’s the rush?” He shifted to press a knee against her crotch and pinned her by the shoulders, leaning in. “I’ll get mine, don’t you worry.”

She swallowed, eyes blown wide. “I, uh. I’ve got to pee.” He backed away as she struggled free, amused. Mornings never were her strong suit. “We’ll talk about this later?”

Hancock saluted cheerfully and rummaged for a smoke. “You got it.”

So, he’d spent most of a day ravaging the most delicious thing to ever set foot in the Commonwealth, hearing her sing his name while he explored her body. No, she hadn’t liked that she was laid bare and vulnerable while he kept up his defenses, but--- hell, they had a good thing going, and he wasn’t playing some kinda power game with her. It was going to be an ugly conversation at some point, and it didn’t hurt nothing to have some backup. 

Gorgeous lady goes from happily married to wandering the wasteland, and who would blame her for having needs? She was hungry for some good dick, and she wasn’t going to be able to get it from him. He could rock her world, but he needed some time to ease her into it. 

Hancock was scared shitless, actually. Established ghoulfuckers knew what they could be getting into, and he had had some pretty amazing trips down that particular road, but she was a particular flavor of old world class that seemed… wrong, somehow, to defile. 

He took a deep drag and rested his head in his palm. He could hear the tap running in the other room, and a hiss of discomfort as Nora eased herself into cold bathwater. She—no, they needed to get ready, because there was shit to do that was way more important right now. He’d delayed her long enough.

Maybe Codsworth could come up with something like coffee for them. It was a long, awful trip back to the Glowing Sea and he needed all the encouragement he could get.

 

Turns out that some junkie trader was making her rounds that day, and she just happened to have a sack of honest-to-god coffee beans. The markup was even worse than in Goodneighbor, and he had to supplement some of her asking price with his remaining stash of Psycho, but it was almost worth it to hear Codsworth trip his circuits over the chance to brew it up. Nora emerged just as it was finishing percolating, and she accepted the ceramic mug with some quiet shock.

“It feels kinda wrong now,” she admitted once Codsworth had floated out. “Nate and I had our coffee before we ever tried to talk to each other in the mornings.” Hancock was tipping a splash of whiskey into his cup; he looked up from it at her odd tone and offered the bottle. She shook her head.

“No, no, it’s…. I mean, I’m already redefining things, right? I can’t stay stuck in the way things used to be.” She took a long sip and wrinkled her nose. “Nate would have hated this. He was such an ass about his coffee. He only drank his expensive.”

Hancock bit back a retort about how damn expensive this coffee had been; he knew she wasn’t complaining. “Was he like that about everything? Seems like this was a nice place.”

She smiled into her cup. “Not everything. He was a soldier, so he was used to roughing it, but he did like things nice when he was home. He always said there wasn’t a point to fighting if you didn’t have a life worth defending at home. Me, I grew up poor as shit, you know? It’s not like I don’t have standards, but I always figured we could use the money for practical things. Getting Codsworth was maybe the first completely frivolous thing I ever suggested. But he was such a help with Shaun.” 

It wasn’t hard to picture it. Nate, all tall and beefy in his uniform, constantly bickering with his thrifty wife—maybe over the same morning coffee that she and Hancock were sharing now. Maybe it got worse when they had the baby. His own parents certainly argued enough when he and his brother were growing up.

“You with me? Kinda spacing out there.” She reached a hand across the table, which he accepted gladly. He’d forgotten just how soft smooth hands were. He wished that it was safer to touch; even now her Pip-Boy was complaining about the contact. 

Her hands would feel so good on him. 

“Hmm? Yeah, sorry. Must have hit the sauce a little hard there.” He traced her wedding ring with his thumb, sending up a silent apology to Nate. 

“You are just a grab-bag of vices.” She squeezed his fingers fondly. “Going to be alright for travel, or do we need to stick you in the drunk tank? I could ask Preston to walk with me.” 

“Okay, so I know you’re trying to rile me, and it’s working. Fuck that guy. I’m fine.” He took his hand back to cross his arms, putting on a show of indignation, and it pulled a giggle out of her. 

“It wasn’t the plan to fuck that guy, but if you insist?”

Hancock reclaimed his coffee and shot her a glare over the rim of the cup, while his chest cramped tight at how much he’d been craving moments like this with her. “You’re the worst and you should feel bad. Why am I helping you out again?”

Nora leaned on her elbows, and Hancock most definitely didn’t glance down the front of her dress, nope. “Beats me. You’re some kind of masochistic, maybe.”

“Oh, you’d like that. Too bad I’m not into pain, huh?”

She gave him a coy grin, locking their eyes. “You’re not into getting hit. There’s a difference.” 

He opened his mouth, then failed to produce any sound and closed it again. She giggled and broke the stare. “Don’t think too hard on that. Thanks for walking me back to the Sea.”

He coughed, taking a moment to adjust to the conversational whiplash. “Uh, yeah. I’d still feel better if you didn’t go in alone. How would you feel about swinging by Dickhole City and getting Nick to go along? He’s crazier than a sack of cats but he’s good in a radstorm.” 

“That’s an idea, actually. Can’t imagine why he’d want to, but it can’t hurt to ask.” She finished her coffee, slipped off her Pip-Boy, then crossed to stand behind him and drape her arms over his shoulders. He leaned back against her belly and shivered a bit as her cool hands found his collarbone.

“We’re okay, right?”

He pressed his cheek to her forearm. “Yeah, we’re okay. You got your shit and I got mine, but I’m gonna try to be good for you.”

Nora chuckled, a low rumble that he felt as well as he heard. “Are you saying you want to be my good boy?”

Hancock set down his coffee cup quite carefully before he turned around and tackled her to the ground. She laughed on the way down and accepted his kiss, bitter and toxic and whiskey-soaked as it was. “Don’t think you can tame me that easy, sweetheart.” 

Her hand crept under his coat for a firm squeeze on his bony ass. “Wouldn’t dream of it. You ready to go or are we starting something here?”

She’d look good down here with his cock between her lips, ghoulish as it was. Goddamn. He kissed the tip of her nose and got to his feet, offering her a hand up. “Makin’ me a bastion of responsibility here. C’mon, let’s get going.”

 

Hancock lingered outside of Diamond City with Dogmeat while Nora tried to recruit Valentine. She’d shown him the basics of wigmaking yesterday when he came up for air, and once he got the technique down, it was surprisingly pleasant to knot the tiny bundles of hair into the silk cap. It was going to take ages to finish, but the supplies packed up neatly and didn’t add much weight to his pack, and he was glad for something to keep his hands occupied when he took watch at night. 

It was helpful out here, too, in the shadow of what used to be his home. If he looked too closely at it, he could feel its darkness singing out to him, reminding him of what a complacent fuck-up he was there, how he even failed to kill himself properly when he tried. But he didn’t have to look there. He took a bench out in the ruins of Boston and focused only on creating Daisy’s wig, making something beautiful and useful out here while Dogmeat watched for threats. 

Would it be weird to see his friend wearing Nora’s hair? Would Daisy even accept this? Could they fix it if it didn’t fit?

“Never thought I’d see the day that I’d see little John McDonough put down the Jet and take up knitting.” Valentine smiled down at him from the doorway of the ruined house Nora had left him in, and he gave the ol’ guy a lazy salute with his needle. “It’s Hancock now, Nicky. Ain’t no pride left in the name McDonough.”

He packed the supplies away and rose to embrace him, clapping him warmly on his freaky robot back. “Besides, it ain’t knitting, and I don’t have to be sober to do it.”

“You’re more sober now than the last time I saw you. Bet you don’t even remember me pulling you out of that scrape a while back.” 

Hancock furrowed his brow, trying to recall. “You did what now? I haven’t seen you since before I got my shiny new suntan, buddy.”

Valentine chortled like a wagon full of ball bearings. “I hauled your sorry tail out of the Wasteland a few years back. You were partying a little too hard and your buddies left you for dead out there. I kept getting reports of a crazy man dressed like a pirate inviting burnt-out cars to settle in Goodneighbor.”

It was starting to sound familiar. “Huh. Don’t remember you bein’ there, but I could buy that. Anyway, back to a topic that ain’t about me makin’ an ass of myself, it’s good to see ya. You comin’ with us to the Sea?”

Nora passed by him, briefly brushing their hands, and Nick gave Hancock a long look. “When Nora came to me with her case, I said I’d help. I’m not gonna let some radiation get in the way of that. Three’s safer than two in a place like that.”

“Hancock’s not coming,” Nora interrupted. “We tried once and he got sick.”

“The hell kind of ghoul gets radiation sickness?” 

“A sad excuse for one, apparently,” Hancock spat. Nora took his elbow and squeezed hard. “Ow, damn, sister, what’s that for?”

“We both appreciate the help, Nick. Ready to go?”

“Lead the way.” 

Nora and her dog walked ahead while Valentine fell back with Hancock. They walked in stubborn silence for a long while before Nick finally asked, “So, you and the vault dweller, huh?”

“Got a problem with that?” Hancock bared a little fang while he spoke.

Nick patted his pockets for a cigarette. “She’s in a vulnerable place, John. She’s lost her family, her culture—hell, everything she ever called normal. I don’t know what kind of arrangement you two have and it’s not any of my business, but I’ve seen this before. People get hurt.”

“It’s Hancock. And you’re goddamn right it’s none of your business.” Nick raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing, just puffing away on a cigarette he couldn’t even feel.

They walked in silence, until Hancock finally sighed. “Okay, fine. Yeah, I know that she’ll figure out she can do better than me. I’m a rebound and I know it. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t worth it. She’s turned my life upside-down, Nick—I feel crazy when I’m with her, but in a good way, and I’d rather feel this than feel nothing.” 

“And what about her?” 

Hancock stared ahead. “She’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions. We talk about things. I have to trust that she knows what’s best for her.”

But did he trust that? He felt a little pinprick of guilt that he expected her to bare her soul while he couldn’t even show her the horrors of his body. 

Fuck. They’d have to have a conversation about this, wouldn’t they? 

Nick cast a sideways look to him, then smiled softly. “Then I hope you both know what you’re doing. For what it’s worth, I can see it. You always did work best with someone who keeps you on your toes, and she’s a feisty one.” 

Well, that feisty one was cooing at her mongrel for killing a mole rat before it could get close to them. Hancock readied his shotgun, because those things rarely traveled alone. Just as he cocked his gun, one popped out of the ground behind Nora, and she’d whipped around to bash it over the head with her rifle just as Nick blew its guts out with a quick pistol draw. 

He felt just a bit better about sending Nora into that hellscape with Nick Valentine at her side. The guy was nosy and old-fashioned, but he’d do a better job of keeping her safe than Hancock could. 

Really, what did she see in him, anyway?

 

Nick was surprisingly helpful when traveling. Not needing to sleep made him a perfect night watchman, and by the time they reached the clean-ish lake they’d bathed in during the last trip, Nora and Hancock were almost spoiled on having a full night’s rest. They decided to make this the rendezvous point; Nora insisted that Hancock didn’t need to wait for her, that Nick was more than capable of seeing her back home safely, but he was adamant. 

He couldn’t walk with her, but he would be there to welcome her out of it—and, if necessary, get in there if they didn’t return.   
They set up camp near the pier. Nick claimed a chair and kept sharp eyes over the area with Dogmeat while Hancock and Nora set up their bedrolls in a tent nearby. With the freedom to let their guard down, Hancock insisted that she take a dose of RadAway to start her journey as healthy as possible, and while she wasn’t super fond of being still for an IV drip, she agreed on the condition that he stay with her. 

It wasn’t like he’d planned to leave anyway, but it was the safest time for it. When she pulled at his jacket, he let it slip free without protest; she was exposed, shivering in a tank top that allowed access to her vein, so it was only fair that he shows some skin in solidarity. 

Her Pip-Boy shone a sick green light over him, but what was it going to do, make him look worse?

“I hear you thinking too much. We should fix that.” She draped a leg over his lap and poked him in the ribs with her toes. “Got anything good in that big bag of yours?”

“Oh? Not what I expected when you said you’d get me in the sack.” He pulled the bag close and rummaged in his stash. Jet tonight? Mentats? Something gentle, anyway. 

“Like you’re disappointed.” She accepted an inhaler and took a hit, shuddering as it hit her lungs. “Oh, fuck, that’s good.” 

“Want to kick it up some?” He hit his Ultrajet and stretched out beside her, sighing deeply. “Mm, that’s good. Not for you, though, we want you lucid tomorrow.”   
.   
“You’re a show-off. You’ll be just fine, huh?”

Hancock shrugged. “I have to use a lot more to get fucked up. Not exactly a point of pride here. Do you trust me?”

She took another puff. “Yeah, I do.”

He rolled over and disconnected the RadAway line, then slipped in a needle of Med-X. She gasped, and fuck, he was crawling all over her, and she was spreading out beneath him, hot and inviting. “Mm. These two together are gonna feel great. Just keep talking to me, okay?”

She ran her hands along his back, stroking the rough scars that marred his skin. “Mm. You feel so interesting.”

He reconnected the RadAway. “Yeah? Not the word I’d choose for it.”

“Well, it’s what I choose. I like your hands.” 

He closed his eyes and hit the inhaler again. “Tell me about that.” 

“They’re rough. My skin tingles when you touch it.” 

“That’s incredibly dangerous. You like that?” He draped his hands on her belly and scraped his rough palms across her belly. She whispered, and he felt some kind of tension break inside him, some horrid self-restraint just barely clinging on.

“Yeah.” 

“You’re gorgeous. You’re smart. Real classy. You get off on letting a ghoul touch you, don’t you?” He nuzzled her breast through the thin shirt, reaching beneath to pinch the other. 

“Hnng. Yes.” She arched into the touch, shivering. He clamped mouth around her nipple and sucked hard, and she cried out, digging her nails deep into his shoulder. He meant to shush her—Nick was still outside, and they didn’t need to attract any attention—but there was a curious taste on his tongue, and his fingers felt… slick? 

“Nora?” He backed off. Her shirt was damp, her face flushed, eyes blown wide under the strong opiates in her system. “Nora, got a real awkward question here. How long ago did you have your baby?”

She frowned. “I… have no idea how to answer that, actually. Two hundred years? What’s wrong?”

“Not, like, actual time.” He meant to back off, he really did, but he couldn’t fight the compulsion to touch when she responded so eagerly. He tugged the neck of the shirt down and freed her breast to roll her nipple beneath his thumb. “How much time do you remember?”

She whined. “Hancock, why?”

“Call me crazy, but I think you’ve sprung a leak.” 

She blinked at him, not comprehending in her chem haze, but she sat upright and curled up on herself, yanking out the IV. “Oh! No, I-- _fuck_ , I’m sorry, I—“

“Hey, hey, shh, what’s this about?” He moved in to kneel beside her. “Nothing to be sorry for. You’re alright, we’re alright. Can I touch you?”

She shuddered. After an agonizingly long silence, she nodded. “I am so embarrassed. I didn’t realize. I had been dry for months.”

He pulled her into his arms, hugging her close. “There’s no shame here. I don’t mind it. It’s, uh. It’s kind of hot, actually, and that’s a thing I didn’t know about me.”

She laughed at that, a choked sort of sound, and backed off to look at him. Apparently trusting what she saw, she wiped at her eyes, shaking. “Pervert.”

“You want to tie me up and hit me with whips and shit, and I’m the pervert?” He laid back, stretching an arm in invitation, and she followed him down to straddle his lap. 

“I don’t want to do those things to you, you said you don’t like them. I said I like doing those things. But I don’t need them for you.” She pulled his hands up to her hips, and he hooked his thumbs into the edges of her open vault suit, open down to the waist. “I can make you feel good in so many ways if you’d trust me.”

“Trust you?” Fuck, was he being called out? “Nora. I trust you. I, uh. I’ve got some stuff I don’t know how to talk about with you, but it’s not trust.”

“Is it weirder than mine? Goddamn, Hancock, you see what you just did to me.” And yeah, sitting tall over him, her shirt damp and arm bloody, high as a fuckin’ kite, she looked as wild as he’d ever seen her.

He shuddered. “You’re high. This isn’t right.” 

“You’re always high. That’s a rotten excuse.” 

Rotten? Well, wasn’t that just on the non-existent nose? “Nora, darlin’, I’m a ghoul. I’m not gonna live up to your expectations, ever. I’m real fucked up and fuckin’ forgive me if I’m nervous to show you, okay?”

She stared down at him, processing for a long, long moment. “I want you, Hancock. All of you. It’s hard to convince you if you’ve already decided I don’t get to choose.” 

He sighed and fumbled for his inhaler, hitting it for some vapor courage. “Alright, you want this? I’ll show you what you get.” 

First the belt, then the socks, and there’s his mutilated feet, missing a toe and scarred to hell. “Goin’ ghoul rots you from the outside in. It hits all of us different, and I got it a little harder than some. You sure you wanna see this?” 

Nora crawled close and answered with a kiss. “I’m sure I want you. Show me.”

He shimmied out of ol’ Johnny’s fancy trousers, and without his costume, there wasn’t a scrap of anything to separate him from a feral. Her gaze felt tangible on his skin, hot and crawly, and it settled on his junk with—sympathy? No, not pity. What was that look?

“Can I touch?” 

“If you want to.” He had been aroused before, thank you Ultrajet, but sheer terror had fixed that real damn quick, and his disfigured dick flopped sad against him. He’d lost a fair bit of it right off, and the flesh had healed over in a smooth, tight plane at the junction, while the shaft at the base had taken a rough feel like the rest of him.

Her hands were frigid. He flinched, and she hesitated only briefly before nudging his legs apart. She scooped his balls into a gentle hand, rolling them in her palm. “Surprisingly soft,” she murmured, surprised. 

“I have no idea how to take that,” he grumbled. She laughed and gave him a squeeze, and goddamn if his dick wasn’t responding already. 

“Do you still feel sensation?”

“Some.” He turned away, embarrassed. “I can come, but it takes some work.” 

“Do you want that now?”

He shook his head. “No, not tonight. You can do what you want, but don’t expect anything, yeah? Nervous as hell over here.” 

Nora made a soft sound of assent. “That makes two of us. I’m going to get this wrong for a while, okay? But I want to learn.” 

“That’s… an odd thing to say.” She wrapped a hand around the length she could grip and felt the scarred surface with her thumb, and he dropped his head back against the ground. “Learning me. University of Hancock, Dick Theory 101.”

She giggled helplessly and gave him a firm stroke, and okay, wow, she could keep doing that. “Imagine that syllabus. ‘Giving head when there’s no head.’”

“’Zombie-fucking for the radiation-deficient.’” 

She shuffled down to the ground. “Hmm. ‘How to drive your lover feral’?” And she took the length into her mouth, and he had to clap his hands over his own to muffle a shout. “Ha, fuck. Good one. Punny.”

She released him with a wet _pop_. “I try.” And goddamn, but she was on him again, feeling him out with her tongue and fondling his sac, and he ran his hand through her hair—her short hair that he’d hacked off with a goddamn sword. She’d trusted him once; why had he doubted her now?

“Mm, Nora, get up here.” He tugged gently at her hair and she let go with a sharp nip to his thigh. “Ow, what?”

“My hair isn’t a leash to pull. What’s up?”

“Apart from the obvious.” He pulled her in for a kiss, tasting something acrid on her lips. “We should get you back on the RadAway.” 

“Mm, in a minute.” She guided his hand into her vault suit, and—holy hell, she was _soaked_. “Feel like helping me with this?”

He growled and tugged at the suit. “Get this shit off. I won’t be the only one swingin’ in the breeze.”

 

Outside, Nick Valentine finally accepted that he couldn’t actually shut off his hearing mechanism and resigned himself to a long, long night. 

“Is it always like this, Dogmeat?”

The dog flopped down to the dock at his feet, sighing with doggy resignation. 

“Yeah, bud, I thought so.”

 

Hours later, Hancock emerged from his Jet coma to crawl over Nora and reinsert her IV, like the responsible ghoul he was, and found some trousers before heading outside for a smoke. He sat on the end of the pier and dipped his toes in the water, sitting with Nick in an easy silence. 

“Next time you two want to bring me along, would you mind keepin’ it in your pants? You about fried my circuits with all that.”

Hancock gestured vaguely with his cigarette, flashing him a wicked little grin. “Oh, believe me, I tried.”


	12. Well and Truly Fucked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took a real long time to come to this, didn't it? But you can't run forever. They haven't forgotten. 
> 
> The Glowing Sea is scary, news at 11.

(Sorry that this took a year, folks.)

 

Before the world ended, Nora used to enjoy oranges. Hancock knew the color, of course, and there were Mentats that were kinda sour and fruity if you had a little imagination, and she could do her best to describe the flavor, but how in the world can you condense an experience of taste like that into words? How could an orange be something fresh and sweet and wet, but real? A treat, but sharp, maybe painful? 

The miasma around the Glowing Sea could taste like that, he imagined. Acrid, bitter, occasionally sickly sweet in the way that the earth sometimes smelled before a rain. He’d probably never taste an orange, but neither would Nora; all they had left was this fallout to choke on. 

Hancock, morose? Perish the thought. Nora, however, hadn’t gotten the memo that she should be fuckin’ terrified. The sky was green, the air was poison, and all she was worried about was finding a way to needle at his insecurities—and man, did he do enough needling of his own without her help.

“You could call it Stubby.” 

“No.”

“Nubbins?”

“What, no.”

“How about—“

“What if my junk already has a name, Nora?”

She laughed and found his hand. Despite Hancock’s irritation, he allowed her to lace their fingers. “Then I want to know it. Have you named it?”

Hancock snorted. Heavy air settled into his lungs, burning like a sour hit of bad Jet. “No, because I’m not insane.”

Nora’s silence was telling. He squeezed her hand. “And speaking of insane, you’re really sure you want to do this.” It wasn’t a question. They were near enough to the Glowing Sea that the air was stinging in their lungs and the sky more yellow than not. Radiation at this level didn’t bother him much, and even felt pretty good in the right circumstances, but the insistent prickling at his skin told him that it was really unwise to keep going. 

Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “My baby is out there somewhere, Hancock. How do I live with myself if I don’t do everything I can to know the truth?”

“And I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it. You’re walkin’ into Hell itself on the off-chance that… that you can get yourself into something _worse_ , and I’m gonna watch you do it. And if something happens—“

She interrupted him with a kiss. His protests faded into a whine against her mouth, and he slumped against her as the tension melted into resignation. “Just… take care of yourself. Call me selfish, but you’re the best damn thing to happen to me out here and I’m not real thrilled to send you out into that shit again.”

“I know. I know.” She slipped her hands beneath his coat to grip at his shirt, thumbs pressing hard against his skin. “It’s only going to get worse, you know. If I come back from this, the next stop is the Institute. I’ll understand if you need to—to get some distance there. From me. Not get too close.”

“Darlin’, you’re gonna have to try much harder than that to chase me off.” He finally cracked a smile, however weak, and gave her rump a firm pat. “Dogmeat an’ I’ll be right here when you get back. Don’t you go lettin’ Valentine steal you away while you two are out there, huh?”

“Mm, are you sure? It would be pretty exciting to get stolen by a handsome ‘borg like Nick. Big, strong, klepto robot hands and all. Bet he gives good backrubs.” 

Hancock snickered at the indignant huff from ahead of them, Valentine clearly trying and failing to tune them out while he investigated the remnants of a house. “If you don’t mind motor oil stains. Color me shocked and appalled. Better cover up that sweet ass with your rubber suit, huh? Out of sight, out of mind?”

Valentine sighed heavily. “You do realize there’s a multitude of reasons I’m not ‘stealing’ anyone? She’s a person, not a prize to put in your pocket.”

Nora bit her lip at that, hiding a smile, and he felt his chest ache with some emotion he couldn’t quite place. She dropped her gear to rummage for the hazmat suit. “I think he knows that, Nick. Jealousy in either direction isn’t really my thing.” 

“I wouldn’t piss her off on purpose. She could totally take me in a fight. Goin’ ghoul hasn’t been too great for the ol’ muscle tone.” He affected a pout, leaning heavily on one hip. “I bet I’d do terribly in a fight for your honor, darlin’. Nicky could just swoop in and flex those big beautiful pistons and I’d lose you forever.”

While she cackled, muffled under the struggle of climbing into the suit, Valentine shook his head. “You kids and your modern relationships. Seemed much more straightforward in my day.”

“I have no idea what I’m doing.” Hancock stood with Nick and watched her struggle with the zipper through her thick gloves. “Just kinda flyin’ by the seat of my pants here. She makes it real easy, though. Never been so damn natural to work together like we do, you know? Can’t help but feel we’d do alright if we could stop doing stupid shit like throwin’ ourselves into rad storms for some fuckin’ mechanical doodad.” 

“She’s got a long way to go. This is gonna be her normal.” Nick leaned in and gave his elbow a squeeze, and patronizing as it was, he still felt better. “I’ll do everything I can to get us both back here. Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone.”

“Says the man throwing himself into the crater with the radfreaks.” 

Nick lit a cigarette. “I didn’t say I was bein’ smart, I said don’t get yourself killed. At least one of us needs to walk out of this alive. There’s a basement in that house over there to keep you and the pup out of the rain. Stay around here, will ya?”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he said, half-honestly. “Don’t get dead. World needs crazy motherfuckers like you to play for the good guys.”

“Do my best. Now go be a gentleman and help her with that suit, will ya?”

Hancock flashed him a cheeky grin. “You hear what she was callin’ me? She can get her own damn zipper.” 

She did, eventually. He double-checked it during their hug goodbye, though it didn’t do much to relieve the dread in his belly as he watched them leave. The dog whined after them, obviously unhappy about being left with a disaster like himself, but Nora had always said he was a Very Good Boy and whaddayaknow, the dog stayed put when she said so. 

Sigh. “Well, c’mon, fleabag. Nothing else to do here. It’s only a couple days; maybe we’ll work on Daisy’s hair? What you’re missing in thumbs you make up in.” 

Dogmeat huffed a sigh, the softest little _boof_ , and followed him inside.

 

In one day, Hancock got half the wig vented, and only used enough of the Jet to take the edge off. 

By the second day, the Jet was gone, the wig was relocated to the bottom of his pack-- _gotta be ready to move, gotta go_ \-- and his jaw ached from grinding his teeth. Why was this taking so long?

He didn’t sleep that night. 

He didn’t sleep the next night, either. The Psycho wouldn’t let him even if he could untangle himself.

By the fourth day, he and the dog were hunting radscorpions and purifying water, and everything ached _so goddamn much_ from the chem withdrawals. He’d been easing off through the months, and he’d hit it too hard, too fast, and he hadn’t packed nearly enough for this horseshit. 

He was going to have to go in after them. He’d have to find their bodies out there, and this was it, the end of a fuckin’ era, wasn’t it? And just like Nora couldn’t just move on without knowing about her kid, he couldn’t just go home. 

He tapped out his last cigarette and sat on the porch while the winds of a radstorm crashed against him, protected just enough by a headless hazmat suit. Hopefully Dogmeat would be smart enough to get back home alone, because he was going to fucking kill himself doing this. He’d tucked a note into the dog’s bandana, penned in a shaky hand, _We’ve had a good run. Goodneighbor and Sanctuary must live. J.H.”_

“You’re not gonna follow me out there, buddy. I’m gonna do my best, and you need to go home, okay?”

Dogmeat huffed dejectedly, then tensed. In a flash, he was on his feet, thrumming with excitement. Hancock snuffed out the cigarette and squinted towards the storm, and-- 

And there was a figure, sort of. He was on his feet in a heartbeat, rushing towards it, his heart breaking with every step as his brain’s rusty gears started to spin. Who was it? Who was he losing? Who had returned? 

Closer, however, he identified the figure as Valentine, and over his shoulders was Nora, bloodied and still. His relief at seeing both of them froze into something cold in his belly; he was missing an arm, and his synthetic body was mangled even worse than usual. His joints were caked with some kind of particulate, sparking here and there as his body struggled to advance. 

Hancock took Nora from him, and Valentine crumpled to the ground. “Take her inside,” he rasped, and he didn’t fight him, not this time. 

He dropped her on a table, gently as he could, and tore the remains of her suit away. Vicious burns had eaten through to her skin, and he felt a sickening crunch as he put a hand around her wrist to feel for a pulse. 

She was breathing. That was enough. He rummaged through his bag and stabbed her neck with a stimpack, and… nothing. 

Nothing. 

“This is out of your hands now,” said a gruff voice from the doorway, and he had to blink away tears to see the figure. Dark sunglasses, long coat-- _fuck_ , he’d seen that coat before. The fucking Institute was here. 

Not on his watch. “You can’t have her.” His gun was by his bag, uselessly discarded on the front porch, but he had his knife. This courser had a big, big gun, but he could chop the fucker’s hand off. He had to try. 

The agent moved closer. Hancock moved between the table and the doorway, teeth bared, hand going for a non-existent sidearm. “Take one more step, asshole, and I blow your fuckin’ brains out. Walk away.”

“Despite what you think about us, Mayor Hancock, the Institute is not your enemy. We have the technology to save her.” 

“Three.”

A man in some kinda spacesuit thing elbowed his way around the guy. He couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Tall, Dark, and Scary nodded. “Our doctor has treatments for radiation poisoning that could save her. You are days away from the nearest settlement. Is your pride worth her life?”

Hancock sucked in a breath. “You’re lying.”

The spaceman cautiously lowered the visor on his helmet, revealing goggles and a heavy-duty respirator. “She’s dying. Nobody wants that, right? She hasn’t even met--”

The courser interrupted him. “Their family business is not this… man’s… concern, Dr. Volkert.”

Hancock felt numb. Family. “You have him. You took her kid.” 

“We rescued him. Father has saved us, and now we will save her.”

Behind him, Nora’s soft breathing stilled. They had her son. They were going to take her, whether they mowed him down or not. 

He was more useful to her alive. 

He stepped aside. “Then do it.” His voice sounded dull in his ears.

The doctor hesitated, then approached. “We aren’t the bad guys, you know. We’re trying to help. We can do so much good.” A sharp look from the courser shut him up, and he gently picked up Nora’s broken body, and they were gone in a flash. 

Hancock slumped against the table. The courser had not left, or… done anything, really. Then another spaceman made its way backwards through the door, hands up in surrender-- one holding a metal case,-- and there was Valentine hobbling in, gun pointed square at his hostage’s head. 

Once inside, the hostage very slowly put the box on the ground and unlatched the head of the suit, then pulled the helmet off to reveal soft features. A woman. Nick’s arm dropped for just a moment, and she used the distraction to rattle off a code that had him slumping to the floor. 

When she turned to face them, she was all smiles. “Hi! Oh, you’re him! We’ve heard a lot about you, Mister McDonough. Or is it Mayor Hancock, like a secret identity? I like that one better, actually. Hi.” She extended a hand, and the courser cleared his throat. She rolled her eyes. “That guy, so serious. Hey, mind if I fix up your buddy? He’s not doing so great, and he was trying to kill me kinda hard so I had to deactivate him, but it’s _so cool_ to see one of the early synth models! I’d heard there were just two, and I’m surprised he’s still working, wow.” 

 

Hancock blinked. “What.” 

She rolled her eyes again. “Is it a man thing, then, that you’re all so dumb? C’mon, I want to help. Can you help me get him onto that table you’re sitting on? How about you, X6?” 

The courser didn’t seem to react. “I am here to ensure your safety, Ms. Cruz. I cannot do that with my arms full.”

Hancock finally felt sensation in his face again. A plan was forming, slow and cloudy, but there. He had to survive this to make it work, and he needed all the help he could get. “Sure. Okay.” 

He helped her schlep Valentine’s body onto the rickety table and assisted as necessary. She put him to work scrubbing out gunk from his joints while she soldered and stitched, rambling pleasantly all the while about comic books or something. 

She frowned over the arm for a while, then shrugged. “Could probably come up with something cool if I could take him back to my workshop, but I haven’t been authorized to do that. They’re kinda picky like that. All those sticks up the butt, y’know? Right on up there. But he should be running really well now! I tuned him up and flushed out the deathclaw venom, and what were you even doing out there? Weirdos. I guess he’ll still want to kill me, so, uh, I’m going to give you his activation code and split, okay? Great. Cool working with you, you’re a good listener.” 

She scribbled a code on the back of some garbage in the room and picked up her toolbox. “Later, nerds!” 

She poofed away like the previous doctor, and the courser finally sighed. “Thank you for your cooperation. Do not pursue us. Nora will find you when and if she wants to-- she is no prisoner.” 

He bristled at her name on his lips, but said nothing. He couldn’t risk this, not now.

The courser left. Dogmeat, forgotten, pawed at his leg, not understanding. 

 

Well, shit.


	13. Friendship is Magic, or Some Shit Like That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're trying to take down the freaking Institute, you need a plan, you need resources, and you need to get your head out of your ass long enough to realize that you're not alone.
> 
> Nora is gone, but Hancock isn't out of the game yet.

Love it or hate it, everyone knew Goodneighbor. Slapped together with hope and tape and blood, it was home and it was _his_ , and there was nothing like home to soothe a wrecked soul. 

He needed space to think. 

“How do you make death look worse than usual, my man?” asked Fahrenheit, helpful as ever. She’d been way better at mayoring than him, no surprise but she loathed it. Too much paperwork, not enough bashing skulls, she’d said-- and it was a shame, but yeah, he got it. Those best suited to power never wanted it, and he was sure that it said something about himself, somehow.

“I’m that goddamn talented, darlin’,” he groused, frowning over the latest reports. Fahrenheit had overseen a secret arrangement with the Railroad to construct housing, and their population had grown. Farms sprouted around cheap housing, and previously Jet-addled bums were earning a roof and a hot meal by the sweat of their brow. It was helpful, but goddamn, was this loud. There was no way in hell they didn’t have Institute spies sniffing around.

He wanted subtle, but he could make this work. The Railroad needed safety, and he needed their smarts. Nora had risked everything to bring back some kind of techy doodad, carefully hidden in an empty Ultrajet cartridge reclaimed from the shreds of her hazmat suit. Valentine had confirmed that Virgil had laid out a plan to get inside, but a deathclaw attack had fucked that right the hell up. 

They could try the Brotherhood of Steel, Valentine had suggested, careful and blank. Danse did owe Nora one, but he didn’t trust ‘em as far as he could throw ‘em. No, this was a job that needed a delicate touch, and just a touch of brazen idealism. 

He’d contact the Minutemen about it later, but he couldn’t imagine a world in which Preston Garvey wouldn’t bend over and take a big fat one for his General. They had the fun part in all this, anyway, if you looked at it right.

He was getting ahead of himself. This needed precision, after all, and it wouldn’t work at all if he couldn’t broker his own deal with the Railroad, and that meant he had to talk to their spy.

He’d rather cross the Sea again himself than deal with Deacon, if he was honest, but maybe if he’d done that in the first place this wouldn’t be such a shitshow.

All the gods in all the planes, bless Fahrenheit. She brought him a coffee, the real good kind, and plopped herself on the desk. “Never seen you look so serious. You’re goin’ through a lot of trouble for this gal, huh?”

“I think I’m halfway responsible for getting her into this.” He sighed and slumped over his notes. She took his hat off and ran a hand up his fucked up scalp, and he leaned into the touch. 

“She was going to do this whether or not you were with her, don’t you think?” 

“Probably. Yeah. When Nora gets her teeth into something, she don’t let go.”

Fahrenheit gave him a squeeze. “She brings out something good in you, you know. You’re probably gonna get us all killed taking on the Institute, but what the hell, I support it. Whenever you need me to take over here, I don’t mind it.”

“How’d that treat you, anyway? There had to be some perks.” 

She gave him a knowing grin. “Mmm, something like that. Magnolia came by to congratulate me when the housing went up. Said she was glad that the bums had somewhere to go after they failed to get in her pants.”

He sat up. “Congratulate, huh?”

She plonked the hat back on him and tipped it over his eyes. “Don’t worry, I hosed the couch down when we were done.” 

And for just a moment, the ache in his heart lessened just a bit. Life went on, and people could still love each other, and Fahrenheit was always going to be the best ever, and he was grateful to have her on his side. 

Everything in the world was against them, but they could do this. 

He had to try.

 

The first conversation at the Railroad HQ didn’t go quite like he’d expected. He couldn’t go himself-- there was no way that the Institute wasn’t tracking him-- but he trusted Fahrenheit’s judgement when she chose a young smoothskin woman to go in their stead. 

“--and then Desdemona pulled a gun on me, and that creep who keeps sniffin’ around Goodneighbor intervened. I think he’s on our side? He wants to talk to you, by the way. I gave that thing to their engineer and did some stuff for them-- I mean, it looked like they had plenty of people who could have done it themselves, but they mostly had me stomping raiders, and that’s just fun, sooo...”

Hancock couldn’t help a smile. No wonder Fahrenheit liked her. She’d been a replacement for the day shift guard when Fahrenheit took over, and it had been a perfect match, no pun intended. 

Hancock wasn’t naive, though. If anyone was going to be an Institute infiltrator secretly funneling information back to the bad guys, then it was probably going to be this conveniently placed spitfire-- but who wasn’t going to be suspicious in that role? Fahrenheit trusted her, and he had to trust her judgement on this.

It would be nice to know her name, but the two of them were attached to the Railroad’s moniker of ‘Agent Whisper’, which was a goddamn contradiction if he’d ever heard one; naturally, he loved that. 

“Anyway, yeah. Tom says he can build your thing, but he needs space and materials and… it’s probably not going to be fast, sorry. And that’s what I have.” Whisper bounced on her heels expectantly, and Hancock tried to summon a smile for her, even as his heart sank into his stomach. 

Time. They didn’t HAVE time. Every moment spent pissing around like this was time that Nora was in their hands, but what options did they have?

Sensing his distress, Fahrenheit took over. “It’s helpful, really. We’ll talk this over and be in touch soon. Stay safe.”

Whisper bounced off, and Hancock leaned heavily against Fahrenheit and closing his eyes. She sighed and looped an arm around him, slumping back into the couch. 

“Boss, hey. You’ve got a lot to think about, but it’s eatin’ you up real bad. Let’s take tonight off and get our heads right, okay? You’ve been back a while and you’re all work. Isn’t healthy.”

Hancock dug into the couch cushions and retrieved an inhaler of Ultrajet. “Have been meaning to talk to Daisy.”

“Gonna give her that thing?”

He offered her the inhaler, but she shook her head. Oh, she was still on the clock, right. “I… should.” 

She lit a cigarette and watched him hit the Ultrajet. Oh, shit, was that the good stuff. He sighed and flopped across her lap, and she politely swapped her smoke to the other hand so she didn’t drop ash on him. “It’s just… that was our project, wasn’t it? I don’t exactly have a lot of her left. That hair is it. Do I sound like a creep?”

“You are a creep.” A door slammed nearby; Hancock felt her tense, then relax. Just Sal coming in for the evening watch. “But do you think you’ll forget her if you aren’t looking at a wig every day?”

“...no.” 

“Exactly. She’d want you to give it to Daisy. You worked hard on it.” 

“Yeah, but it’s weird. ‘Hey, friend, sure have missed you! Wear my dead girlfriend’s hair!’”

Fahrenheit elbowed him. Hard. Hancock flinched and sat up as she said, “You cut that shit out right now. The minute you lose hope is when this shit falls apart. We’re _taking down the Institute_ , Hancock, and you are not going to fuck this up with the negativity.” 

Sal leaned in the doorway and added, “Yous got to get it together, Boss. This town needs ya at your best. Daisy misses you.”

“We’re stronger together, Hancock. Let’s go see our friend.”

“...I just learned that Ultrajet has started making my face leak, and that’s terrible.” He pocketed the inhaler, wiped the obviously-chem-induced wetness away from his eyes, and said, “Yeah. Let’s go.” 

 

One advantage to the influx of skilled workers in town was that Daisy’s shop, previously wrecked by KLE0’s enthusiasm, was looking pretty damn good, and Daisy herself…

Well, she had a wig already, but it was synthetic and brittle-looking, obviously salvaged from an old-world shop. Hancock was confident this was the right move. He sidled up to her counter as she was closing down for the night, and she glanced up at him with mock irritation. 

“If you wanted snacks, Mayor, you should come see me during business hours,” she chided, and he hopped up to straddle the desk, just obtrusive enough that she couldn’t ignore him, but not actually getting in the way of settling her till. 

“What if I wanted your company to go get snacks, fair madam? You’re not gonna leave me lonely, are ya?” 

She barked a laugh at his puppy dog eyes. “Says the son of a gun who left us for half a year! Did you even think of us at all out there?” 

“Every day, darlin’, and I’m not kidding. I have… well, made something for you. Would you let me treat you to dinner to repent for my sins?”

She eyed him up, then turned to stash her day’s caps in the safe. “You couldn’t buy me enough dinner to atone for all you’ve done, but maybe our bar tab will come close.”

Hancock grinned and hopped down, arms wide, and she didn’t hesitate to meet him for a hug. “I missed you, darlin’. Don’t let me leave like that again, okay?”

She laughed and stole his hat, which-- okay, that made her bad wig look pretty good, actually, but maybe he was biased. “You have a life, you’ve got your secrets, and that’s alright. Just come visit sometimes, will you?” 

“You’ll be seein’ me around more, I promise. We’re better together, I hear.”

Nora’s absence was omnipresent, an aching and bitter thing, but they were right, weren’t they? Goodneighbor was his home, and these people were his family, and he needed them just as much as he needed air to breathe or chems to… well, also breathe. And “need” was a strong term when talking about ghoul physiology…

Daisy grabbed his arm and shook him free from his thoughts, and he linked elbows with her gladly. 

He was home.


End file.
